Note: Unlocking the Bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC

There have been mixed reports of people managing to unlock the bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC. I’ve done some extensive research on unlocking and rooting this phone and I’d like to outline all my findings here.

Being able to unlock the bootloader on the Kyocera 902KC would be a huge boon for usability in North America, as it would mean you could sideload the microG services, allowing you to utilize maps properly, as well as any apps that rely on Google Play Services in order to function.

In Developer Settings, you can flip the option to allow OEM Unlocking, which would allow you to unlock the bootloader using fastboot - however - the bootloader in question is completely unaccessible. Looking in the source code, there is no key combination that allows you to switch to it on boot, and you cannot force it to load into the bootloader using adb.

People have contacted Kyocera about this, and their line is that since it’s considered a “Basic Phone”, there is no access to the bootloader whatsoever.

This means reports of people managing to get MicroG, or any other services that require a custom rom or root to work, have either figured something out that I haven’t - or are fundamentally misunderstanding how these tools work, and more likely have just installed some dead APKs.

If you do have any information about sucessfully unlocking the bootloader on the 902KC, please contact me.