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I rooted my Motorola Milestone 2.1-update1 with the latest beta of Universal Androot, and it seems to have worked fine. I've installed busybox, used titanium backup, and installed a couple root-only apps.

Now I'm thinking about using ROM Manager to see what custom ROMs can be installed. However, I'm worried because I've read the milestone has some sort of lock in the bootloader, and I never actually unlocked the bootloader while rooting it. Am talking sense? Will I run into problems if I simply install ROM Manager and try to install a custom ROM?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that rooting and unlocking are separate issues. And so I'm wondering if I don't have to unlock my phone before messing with ROM Manager.

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In short, your phone has a locked bootloader. There is no way to unlock it (currently). What does that mean to you? Basically it means you can flash "ROMs", but you cannot flash a new kernel on the phone. The kernel is what controls what clockspeed slots are available on your phone to over/underclock to.

For example, if someone made a Gingerbread ROM for the Milestone, you could flash it. But you will always be stuck with the same kernel that originally came with your phone.

As far as I know, you should be able to use ROM manager to flash ROMs on your phone so long as it is rooted. It's just that none of these ROMs will be able to change your kernel.

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  • Thank you for the clarification. What kind of features can I expect to miss due to not being able to change the kernel?
    – Malabarba
    Feb 18, 2011 at 15:08
  • @Bruce The main thing you will miss without changing the kernel is being able to change the different clockspeeds that your phone can be set to. For example, let's say your stock kernel gives you the options of 125mhz, 250mhz, 600 mhz and 800 mhz. You will always be stuck with those on a locked bootloader. A new kernel could give you something like 250mhz, 600mhz, 800mhz, 1 ghz clockspeeds. Or the kernel could undervolt the processor to conserve battery power. Etc, etc.
    – Bryan Denny ♦
    Feb 18, 2011 at 15:53

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