For those of you that are still waiting for your Transformer Prime to ship you may be a little more reluctant on signing for your package when it arrives. Folks and users who were able to successfully get their hands on this fancy new Tegra 3, quad-core device are starting to report issues pertaining to the device’s GPS. Asus’ official take is for you to turn on WiFi for extra location assistance, however a few folks smell what could be a coverup as Asus pulled previous mention of a GPS feature on the tablet from their official site. While the Prime was updated to fix some bugs, those customer complaints weren’t addressed and there is no telling when they will be. This is interesting news considering the WiFi issues it was rumored to have that also the the supposed reason the tablet was rumored to be delayed.
More bad news for you Prime owning folk who want to tinker and root the device. Those already tinkering, in hopes to customize it, have been thwarted by a locked bootloader. Those dreaming that this would be the an open development device have had their hopes dashed. As of right now it is not known on if Asus will offer some sort of official unlocking tool for those developers. What is known is that developers will be severely limited in modifying the software on the Prime; that is, until some sort of bootstrap or backdoor hack is developed.
The Prime, regardless of the bugs, is still an impressive piece of tech and maybe the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, hinted by Nvidia, will fix these issues when it comes to the Prime. However, we will have to wait and see on that one. For those of you out there that have purchased one or are considering purchasing one, do these bugs or the fact it comes with a locked bootloader change your mind at all?