Don’t unlock your Xperia Z3 Compact’s bootloader if you don’t have to. Photo: Sony

You may want to think twice about unlocking your Xperia Z3 Compact’s bootloader if camera quality is important to you. Sony has warned developers that hacking their devices could degrade camera performance in low light, making images look noticeably worse than they did before.

Device Unlock, the new app that will allow T-Mobile customers to quickly and easily unlock their smartphones when their contract is up, is now available to download from Google Play. You probably won’t be able to use it just yet, however, because it seems it’s initially only compatible with just one handset.

The Team Win Recovery Project custom recovery now provides official support for the first Android Wear smartwatches from Samsung and LG. The release gives Gear Live and G Watch users the ability to flash custom ROMs and other tweaks, make complete ROM backups, and more.

Just like HTC and Motorola, Sony has openly embraced the Android development community by providing official bootloader unlocking tool for its devices. This makes it easier for Xperia device owners to gain root access on their handsets, as they can simply unlock the bootloader and then proceed to flash a root permission manager app.

However, unlocking the bootloader of a Sony device disables certain features, which is why most users actively avoid unlocking the boot loader of their handset.

While Android’s notification system is far superior to the iPhone’s in almost every way, Google could certainly make some improvements to the way in which we receive alerts when our smartphones are locked. All we get with stock Android is a tone and a blinking LED.

Fortunately, there are some third-party solutions that offer a lot more. SlideLock displays iPhone-style notifications on your lock screen so that you can read messages and emails without having to unlock.