The Samsung Galaxy Note and the Samsung Galaxy Note II may have ruled the phablet category in the smartphone competition but this only happened because there was device massive and powerful enough to give the two generations of Samsung phablets more than token competition. LG tried when it launch the LG Optimus VU but still fell short. HTC however has a better chance of at least closing the gap when the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer unveiled the HTC Droid DNA a couple of weeks back.
The launch of the HTC Droid DNA in US shores via Verizon however was marred by the wireless provider’s decision to lock the bootloader of the HTC phablet. This led to consternation among the power users and hackers in the client base of Big Red. This little stumbling block however has already been taken care of by the hardworking boys and girls of the developer communities because they already managed to find a work around to get the bootloader of the HTC Droid DNA unshackled. This involved modifying the CID of the handset a bit so it could “fool” the HTCDev website into thinking that it is dealing with a device that it supports.
Of course, if you happen to be a power user who wants to take advantage of all the numerous personalization and customization options that the Android ecosystem offers, the first thing that you will do with your HTC Droid DNA as soon as you get home from the store is to gain root access to the handset. This process has gotten a whole lot easier because a new all-in-one toolkit is now available so that everything becomes automated. In addition to giving you root access to your HTC Droid DNA, this toolkit also enables you to back up your device, flash custom recovery, flash a new kernel and the like.
There are however some limitations on this all-in-one toolkit for the HTC Droid DNA. For example, there is now way for you to re-lock the bootloader of the HTC phablet. Be that as it may, it still is a very useful tool in tinkering with your handset especially that it comes with a full GUI unlike with the command-line toolkits released for Nexus devices in the past.
As for the HTC Droid DNA, the HTC phablet reached official status when it was unveiled back in November and it also hit the shelves in the same month. The operation of the handset is powered by its QualComm APQ8064 SapDragon chipset which comes with a quad-core Krait processor clocked at 1.5 GHz along with a staggering 2GB of RAM. The HTC Droid DNA comes with 16GB of onboard storage, in which 11GB of this is set aside for user content. As for its display, the HTC Droid DNA sports a 5.0-inch SuperLCD 3 panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels while its dual-shooter configuration is composed of a rear 8MP shooter and a front 2.1MP video call and self-portrait camera.
