Realme 5 Pro & Realme 3 Pro Android 10 kernel source code goes live, flashing & bootloader unlock tool may take time due to COVID-19

Xiaomi is arguably one of the most developer-friendly OEMs out here. A quick scroll through the Xiaomi forums on XDA and you’re bound to come by countless custom ROMs for Xiaomi devices.

The same cannot be said about other Chinese OEMs like say, Huawei, who stopped allowing users to unlock the bootloader on its devices, effectively killing the developer community for Huawei devices.

Another Chinese OEM, Realme, whose devices are often powered by the same developer-friendly Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset donned by Xiaomi devices, is looking to follow in the footsteps of Xiaomi.

To be fair though, there are already a good number of Custom ROMs available for Realme devices on the developer forums, but they don’t come close to the number for Xiaomi devices. Realme is looking to encourage such development by releasing the Kernel source code for some of its devices.

We have recently seen Realme come out to make available the kernel source code for a number of its devices, including the Realme 3 Pro, the Realme 5 Pro which is sold in some markets as the Realme X among others.

This released source codes are based on Android 10. You might recall that both these devices have also recently been updated to Android 10. You can read more about our coverage of Android 10 for the Realme 3 Pro and the Realme 5 Pro here and here respectively.

The above-mentioned source-codes are available for all developers right now. This means that if things go as planned, Realme 5 Pro and Realme 3 Pro users should expect to see more and more stable custom ROMs for their devices soon.

However, Realme says that flashing and bootloader unlock tool might not really work as planned for the next couple of weeks due to the ongoing global crisis that is COVID-19 Pandemic.

It is really encouraging to see a company strive to get things done despite many governments and territories across the globe being on lockdown, thereby severely limiting economies and any work really. We can only hope for quick containment of this Pandemic to things get back to normal.

NOTE: We have these and many more Realme stories in our dedicated realme section.

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