Last Updated on July 4, 2022 by Mathew Diekhake

The bootloader is the thing that Android handsets have that if it’s locked will stop anyone from opening it up to root access. Once it is unlocked, however, then you can start to think about all the mighty fine extra things you want to do. Just to annoy us and stop us from having our fun, certain devices come out of the box with a locked bootloader. As great as the Nexus 5 is, unfortunately it is one of the devices that came locked, proving a real pain in the backside.

Starting last week the dude that develops the One Click method has come up with a way of unlocking it. There is also another way of doing if it is running Android 4.4 Kit Kat and that is with the Chainfire CF-Auto-Root, but this will also give you root access at the same time.

Those of you installing the One Click, it is very easy to execute as you could imagine. Just download the file and run the 1-click-nexus-5-bootloader-unlock.bat file.

If you are using the Auto-Root it’s a little more tricky. You will need Kit Kat and no modifications on the handset already. Download the file and put the Nexus 5 into fastboot mode. From here, upload the root-windows.bat file and wait for it to complete.

The One Click way has had a few reports of the program freezing when running. If this happens to you, you can get away with re-installing the USB drivers and then trying again.

There’s also a method that will get it unlocked manually by using the command prompt. Once there, type: fasboot oem unlock. Apply that after originally typing fastboot devices.

As a refresher, the Google Nexus 5 was priced at $399 because of the Nexus 4 LTE launch. It is one of the first devices to come pre-installed with Android 4.4 Kitkat. Other phones that rival it are the LG G2 and the HTC One.

In terms of specs, the Nexus 5 has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset. This is known as the world’s most powerful Android processor. The Galaxy S5 will look to beat it when they bring out the Snapdragon 801 in June of 2014. For those people who like to take pictures, there is an 8MP camera that comes with Optical Image Stabilization. This will be a big improvement over the earlier Nexus 4 camera capabilities. The Nexus 5 specs list also includes a quad-core 2.26 GHz Krait 400 CPU combined with a Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 450 MHz. There are also 2 GB RAM and 16 or 32 GB internal storage options.

You might also be interested in:

You can subscribe to our RSS, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page to keep on consuming more tech.