Owners of the Motorola Droid Bionic have been waiting for the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for months, with nary a word from either Motorola or Verizon. This update was supposed to roll out in the first half of the third quarter of 2012 (actually, early Q3 2012), and we’re now a week past the halfway mark of the quarter.

As if that news, or lack thereof, was bad enough, Droid Bionic owners got another setback when they learned their devices will not be part of Motorola’s unlocked bootloader campaign.

If you’re the type who prefers to leave his or her phone as is and not customize it in any way, the news shouldn’t affect you much. But there are thousands of smartphone tinkerers who have been waiting for the day when Motorola would allow them to remove the encryption from their bootloaders.

Unfortunately, older devices such as the Droid Bionic and Droid 3 won’t be unlockable, as per an official Motorola announcement via Twitter.

Droid Bionic owners have had a rough go since the phone was introduced at last year’s Consumer Electronics show. Expected to be out shortly after CES 2011, the Droid Bionic was only released September 2011, and not long after that, the higher-end Droid RAZR was announced and released.

And there’s that unfortunate ICS update delay, and a lack of “updates on the updates” from both Motorola and Verizon.

Related posts: