[Motorola Photon 4G] thundercles:
the rooting and unlocking is not the issue with the GSM. The issue is the sprint proprietary code locks access to the GSM modem to sprint sim cards, much like how AT&T released iphones locked access to AT&T sim cards. Foreign phones generally have unlocked GSM modems because it would be too much of hassle to lock a phone to a brand of sim card unless there was significant quantities of that phone to be sold using that sim card and financial motivation to keeping competitor companies from being able to sell service for that phone. There really isn't any single android phone that is garnering itself enough sales outside the US for any carrier to bother sim locking their phones, I don't even know for certain if any of them besides AT&T have done it with the iphone. That is why foreign phones tend to be the ticket to unlocking, and part of why I imagine, it seems that the flashing images for the foreign photons is nonexistent on the internet (I can't say I spent tons of time looking for them, but I spent enough that I had to use google translate to read the Japanese on some websites). The big functional difference between locking and unlocking the bootloader is this:

Locked - must use vendor provided software during the entire boot - this includes the kernel so basically locked= custom kernels/recovery-no 4g-yes

Unlocked - Makes the phones boot files accessable, so you can run custom kernels, and custom recovery and modify anything else boot-related. Unfortunately connecting to wimax requires an RSA key, in which the private key half of the keypair is embedded deep within the nv memory and hasn't been found by any of us yet. The sprint bootloader loads the neccessary pointers to access it and thus complete proper authentication to the clearwire wimax network. so basically Unlocked = Custom kernels/recovery-yes 4g-no

Anyone using the KDDI firmware has no reason not to run an unlocked bootloader. The unlocked bootloader has all of, if not more functionality than motorola's apart from the ability to locate and point software to the RSA key.

Also if your wife is running a photon successfully on a swedish carrier, I'm always interested in details so I can have a better idea of exactly how the lock is implemented in sprint's code. I'd like to know from anyone who has a "gsm unlocked" photon what it says in the "about phone" area of the settings, and at least one to verify that they have placed a t-mobile or at&t sim card into the photon and been able to locate and connect to any network, as in global connectivity of t-mobile and at&t, and/or connenct to t-mobile or at&t networks specifically (the first is more likely since most people with kddi photons live outside the US, and that would at least tell me the sim card works in there, a connection domestically would proove 100% that the solution lies in the KDDI code. Also in the first case though, I don't even think it has to connect to the network, just see them, I have placed a t-mobile card in mine and the sprint firmware wont see any GSM networks, but detects the sim card and shows its apns)

In your wifes case, I would be very interested in seeing the build version of hers as if it is running non-kddi and is unlocked, I'd very much like to know more information about it specifically.

For you foreigners, sit tight, I was hoping to have the full build today but the dedodex disaster halted my operations for a couple days, I'm migrating my building to a different computer with a fresh install of linux on it that I'm going to work up specifically for development, I've become a very lazy and sloppy linux user thanks to ubuntu and that's causing some issues with the laptop I built the KDDI kernel on. Maybe by the end of today or tomorrow I'll have it compiled, don't know when the actual rom will be built after that, depends on how I package it, but probably another day to three days past that before it's mass distributable. I'll try and have the compiled source uploaded in its raw form somewheres so devs that didn't want to spend the time or dedicate the 20 or more gigs of hard drive space but still know what to do with it can have a crack at things. Also my previous attempt* included some sprint code from sprint's open source release, I'm just gonna fly by the seat of my pants and compile the KDDI code as is for testing and verification, and the foreigners. Then we can tackle really unlocking it, the KDDI just might work well enough that maintaining the KDDI code essentially becomes "gsm unlocker". Depends on a few things, wont go too tl;dr unless people want to know.

*that did work, just not well and was untestable since I didn't have access to a sim card at the time and wanted the stock back to go to wimax area surveys