C. Scott Brown / Android Authority TL;DR Unlocking your phone’s bootloader has long meant the risk of losing access to certain software features. In support documents, Google now confirms that Gemini Nano does not work on devices with unlocked bootloaders. If you consider yourself any kind of Android enthusiast, at some point along the line you’ve probably pushed your phone a little beyond what normal users do with it. Maybe that means accessing Developer Options, acquiring root, or unlocking your handset’s bootloader. And while those can be powerful tools, taking your phone in this direction also means accepting the risk that you might break a few things along the way. Today we’re shining a spotlight on one in particular: losing access to Gemini Nano. Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority? Set us as a favorite source in Google Discover to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. You can also set us as a preferred source in Google Search by clicking the button below. This compact version of Gemini is exactly as useful as it is because it’s optimized enough to actually run locally on our phones. But while Google lets us run Gemini Nano on mainstream Android devices, don’t expect Gemini Nano to play nicely if you start fiddling with your phone, as AssembleDebug discusses today on his blog. If you’ve already been playing around with Gemini Nano on a handset you use for development, this is probably nothing new to you. That said, we always like it when we can see a Google policy clearly spelled out, and that’s exactly what we’re now getting by way of the documentation for ML Kit’s GenAI Summarization API. There, Google explains why you might see a “FEATURE_NOT_FOUND” message: Note that if the device’s bootloader is unlocked, you’ll also see this error—this API does not support devices with unlocked bootloaders. Phones have been intentionally disabling certain functionality when they detect an unlocked bootloader for ages — presumably to interfere with debugging and limiting what a potential adversary could learn about the software. A decade back, for instance, Sony was disabling some of its camera post-processing on Xperia phones with unlocked bootloaders. As a result, there’s nothing super controversial about the fact that Google’s doing this with Gemini Nano, and by this point, if you were going to be affected by this restriction, you’ve probably already run up across it. But for those of us who are maybe more curious about the inner workings of Android than necessarily compelled to try messing with it all for ourselves: Consider yourself informed. Follow