You can now unlock Galaxy Z Fold 3 bootloader without losing camera access

According to a recent report, Samsung is no longer going to block camera access for anyone experimenting with unlocking the Galaxy Z Fold 3 bootloader in the latest One UI 4 beta.

Bootloaders are a part of any operating system across the board, and are not exclusive to Android devices by any means. However, every Android phone manufacturer develops their own bootloader, which is particular to the hardware array of each specific phone. 

The Galaxy Z Fold 3, like all interesting new flagships, has already drawn plenty of both budding and professional software developers to unlock its bootloader to play around with and modify the software. But initially, they quickly found out that Samsung had put some unusual safeguards in place to prevent just this kind of exploration, by blocking all access to the device's camera features.

This proved an annoying roadblock for a while, as experimenters simply had no way to access or toy around with one of the most interesting features in a phone, which is the camera. It would simply disappear from the settings and lose all functionality upon unlocking of the device bootloader.

This limitation's welcome removal, however, was just discovered by an XDA senior member, who revealed that as of the second One UI 4 beta, bootloader unlockers will no longer lose camera functionality when they experiment with the Galaxy Z Fold 3.

However, this fix doesn't apply to all Galaxy Z Fold 3 users across the globe yet—as it seems U.S. citizens are still dealing with the same issue, while many international owners are already enjoying the newfound freedom.

If you are currently experimenting with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 bootloader, you can check the XDA forum discussion on whether the fix has reached your region yet.