[G4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Daemos:
I'll need to correct you there. First with Grey market phones. What this typically means is, say for example you live in the USA, and your phone is say from Hong Kong or Taiwan (for those markets) this is considered grey market. Unless if LG provides an international warranty, you will need to try to enforce your rights in that country (if they have consumer protection rights). Sometimes you purchase these phones through an importer, and that importer then will be providing their own warranty, with it's own terms and conditions.. So if you breach one of the terms (usually there is a term stating, warranty is only valid if used within it's intended normal purpose or normal use).

I should also be clear, some consumer protection laws (depending jurisdiction) may not allow the company to void the warranty completely on all components, so say...you unlock boot loader, they may not cover damage to CPU/GPU from overvolting, but if you are having screen coating issues, they should still repair that under warranty.

So it could easily be argued by LG/grey market importer that unlocking the boot loader is not within the normal use. Therefore, the warranty is void (taking into account what I said above). I mean I'm 99% sure most shop owners will easily just replace if you create enough fuss, but do not mistake this as any enforcement of your rights. If LG decides to do so, they can, and your next step would be what? Court? Well, if you lose you could be liable for their legal fees on top of court costs as well (depending on the laws of the jurisdiction you decide to bring an action to court). Now I'm sure if you were really crafty, you could argue that you were not notified of the terms...but usually when you start up the phone for the first time you need to electronically check boxes that accepts random crap, perhaps you can argue that you yourself did not check those boxes...maybe you get a nice judge...who knows.

What would normal use be? Well something the majority of the people using the phone would normally be using it for. A non-phone example would be, you buy a new car, take it to the track, while at the track, you blow up your transmission, therefore your warranty (at least the power train warranty) is now void because you were using the car as a race car. The USA does have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty act, that limits what the company can void, and they must, I believe, prove that what you did to void the warranty caused the issue. (again in the case of tracking the car, it would be easier to prove that caused issues, thus voiding power train warranty, but impossible to prove that would cause your radio to not work)

Apple voids warranties for jailbreaking, but often it is reversible, thus undetectable. Same with rooting your phone, technically that goes beyond the scope of 'normal use', and LG is within it's rights to void warranty for rooting or unlocking bootloaders. Root is easily reversible, and can be untraceable. However, I'm guessing mostly because LG it self-doesn't really do the repairs, but a third party "authorized service centre" does...they don't want to deal with customer complaints, so if you complain they will do it. Because honestly, how many of those people are really aware of what the law states? Really is it worth their time to fight with an angry person? probably not.

So yes unlocking bootloader DOES void your warranty, however, usually it won't affect anything because most repair places won't even bother to check, as they are typically done via "authorized service centres"

It is very bad advice to state that warranty cannot be voided for breaching a term of that warranty. And if you gave that advice as a legal professional that could easily open you up to lawsuits.