Just when you thought Verizon couldn’t piss you off any more, they appear to have gone off and done it again. According to a few lucky developer-types who received their GSIII pre-order early, Verizon’s version of the phone has a protected bootloader. Yeah, that’s right. Verizon has the only U.S. Galaxy S III, nay, the only Samsung phone that isn’t unlockable – the bootloader has been signed and encrypted at Verizon’s request.

Now before you go and cancel your pre-order because you were hoping to hack your way to a better experience, keep in mind that you still have a two week return period before you are stuck with the device. I say this because we aren’t at a complete loss just yet. Keep in mind that only a select few of the many thousands have received their pre-ordered GSIII and hopefully someone will find a loophole in the near future. One interesting thing I should mention is that one dude from XDA got his new GSIII and supposedly it had already been re-flashed. We are just waiting to see if a system dump can be obtained from that unit, and who knows, maybe that will hold the key to our hackable future. Either way I have faith still. We’ve seen our beloved developers overcome some pretty sticky situations in the past. Lets just hope this one isn’t too much of a pain in the ass.

source: XDA