Asus is known mostly for its computers, but the company’s smartphones have clearly made a name for themselves. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC powers the Asus Zenfone 9 smartphone, which also has an effective battery management system. If you’re looking for extra customization choices, you’ll be able to acquire them with the ZenUI skin from Taiwanese business.

Asus is making the Zenfone 9’s bootloader unlockable and providing its kernel source code so that custom ROMs may be created and installed. Asus is making a bootloader unlocking APK available for download from their site. The user will then have to download the APK and follow the app’s instructions. Unlocking a bootloader always results in a factory reset, voiding the device warranty, and the requirement to create a backup of one’s data before proceeding. Future updates will have to be installed manually as well, as a result of this change

All of this paves the way for the exciting part: the phone’s kernel source code has been released as well. In order to construct their own bespoke ROMs, programmers may make advantage of this feature. Modders have shown a great deal of interest in previous Zenfone models, and we don’t anticipate that to change with this one.

Concerned about the Zenfone 9’s two-year OS upgrades, compared to the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro’s three-year OS updates, we’ve expressed our displeasure with Asus. The beautiful thing about custom ROMs, though, is that they allow for the introduction of new features from subsequent version bumps, so long as the excitement (and the development pipeline) for the device is still alive and well.