The Razer Phone 2 launched back in October along with a few cool Razer-branded accessories. It's a gaming phone primarily and it features a 120Hz display and the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip. Thanks to its sheer power, it can be fun for developers who may want to toy with it, and Razer as a company has been rather open to development. The Razer Phone 2 can be bootloader unlocked, but if you're not careful, you can render it unbootable. Thankfully, Razer has released not only factory images so that you can recover your device if you mess anything up, but they've released the kernel source code as well so developers can start making custom recoveries, kernels, and ROMs for the Razer Phone 2.
Razer Phone 2 factory images Razer Phone 2 kernel source
Factory images are extremely important for anybody tinkering with their device, and they're often hard to come by. Very few companies actually release their full factory images, with OnePlus and Google being among the OEMs that do. Most factory images you see on our forums are actually downloaded by intercepting a firmware update and are not officially released by the company. Seeing Razer commit to supporting the development community is great as it gives developers a lot more leeway in what they can and can't do without permanently bricking their smartphone.
As for kernel sources, companies are obliged to release them under the GPLv2, though some have a long history of not doing so. Seeing Razer avoid that pitfall is even better, and it also opens up the door for a huge amount of custom development. Without kernel sources, it can be near impossible to create a custom recovery, custom kernel, or even a custom ROM. The previous Razer Phone gained a decent amount of developer attention, and with both devices supporting Project Treble, there's really nothing stopping you giving a custom ROM a try anyway. If you're interested in keeping up with development, you can check out our Razer Phone 2 forums below.