Samsung Removes Bootloader Unlocking with One UI 8

I dont think you need to do the forum posts but you need to request unlocking every two days and pray it works. Supposedly at 00:00 chinese local time for any chances of getting permission. Took me several months of trying non continuously.

I did that a few years ago. Had to download some tool to my PC.

Then make a request that takes 2 weeks to go through. and enter the or whatever (this was like 2016 or something).

Whole process was clearly designed to make you give up.

Their phones where junk then though and i just got something else in the end. They're a lot better now so actually unlocking it is probably worth something now.

I did that years ago when I bought a Redmi Note 4 in Shenzhen and discovered that the Chinese ROM is very locked down. I created the Mi post, but I don't remember having to make a forum post (although it does ring a slight bell). AFAIK it was just sending a DM to support on the forum / app to explain why you needed to install the Global ROM rather than the Chinese ROM (and being a foreigner was accepted as a valid reason). About a day later they unlocked the phone bootloader remotely, and then I could install any version of the Global ROM I wanted.

I've bought all my subsequent ones (Note 5, Note 8, Note 11, Note 12Pro) in either HK or UK so they all came with the Global ROM, and I've not felt the need to unlock any of them, so not tried to process since. But it definitely used to be pretty easy.

I suspect the reason for the weird process is legal to ensure that phones in China don't get unlocked in order to circumvent content controls.

Surprise that Oppo is in avoid list, while oneplus is in safe list. Both of them are from same company.

This proves there is no technical difficulty to provide unlock bootloader

They mix up Google-vendor (pixels are absolutely the best and most unlocking-friendly hardware at this point), with Google Play Services services/limitations (ie dominant player in android ecosystem) AND Google, the dominant contributor to AOSP project.

And it's also partially false, as Gemini works just fine after unlocking/relocking, and all the advanced features (full performance of the cameras, NPU access, secure element) work even on non-Google OS. Things that do not work (mostly wallet) are valid issue, but then again, they work just fine after flashing OEM firmware And relocking The bootloader.

So I can only guess the quality of the contribution is similar with other phone brands.

Was anyone else shocked to see Microsoft in the top tier of their list of unlock-friendly phone manufacturers?

Unfortunately, it's hard to make Fairphone secure. No separate secure element (so much easier to do brute force PIN attacks) and always lags in monthly security bulletin patches and major OS releases (remember that the monthly patches typically only address high/critical vulnerabilities, for the rest you need OS updates, QPRs, etc.).

Until Graphene works out the deal with the OEM that they are talking to, Pixel is pretty much the only secure phone that allows installing alternative firmware.

Do anyone know why GrapheneOS doesn't support fairphone?

You mean w/ DNS? or an app?

Of course it's been Google's Android, I don't think anyone ever questioned that. The whole reason why the OS still lives as a single entity and the app-ecosystem is not completely fragmented is due to Google's governance to keep it in check.

All the stuff Apple now slowly starts to allow on iOS due to EU's Digital Markets Act is still just scratching the surface of what Android already supports.

> hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU

They provide third party API's to use APPLE's RCS-Service. The alternative would have been to support registering alternative RCS-services as default on the OS (and then, allow the user to choose a service).

> while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it

Android already allows to install and configure alternative applications for RCS, in fact Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices.

You're ignoring an elephant here: Apple meticulously enables these extras functionality exclusively in the EU. They cut these features out for the rest of the world as much as they can. In that regard, they feel like the corporate equivalent of a stubborn 3 tear old.

Google is first and foremost an advertising company. They're going to do whatever makes them the most profit. It always had razor wire fences unfortunately.

The main reason IMO to block rooting is to stop resellers selling phones with preinstalled malware. If the phone has two Amazon/Aliexpress sellers, you're going to pick the cheaper one right? With who-knows-what alterations? It's a really prevalent problem and most people are not going to notice the "insecure" warning at bootup.

- If you're capable of rooting a device then you're capable of understanding the risks which come with doing so.

Spend an hour in xdaforums and you'll see how untrue that is.

Many people root just to get YouTube Revanced or something like that. Meanwhile, you have launchers masquerading as a stock launcher that will happily steal refresh tokens for your Google account.

> The number of users who root their devices will always be so comparitively tiny that the increased risk of data exfil is incredibly small

> the only reason to prevent users from rooting their phones is to protect companies' profits by ensuring users can't fight back against the blatant tracking, data mining, and analytics capture

You contradict yourself, if the number of users which will root their devices is tiny, the lost profits from tracking, data mining, analytics is tiny as well.

> Let's be honest and admit that the only reason to prevent users from rooting their phones is to protect companies' profits by ensuring users can't fight back against the blatant tracking, data mining, and analytics capture which is so valuable to companies.

I'm with you on the general sentiment, but how do the companies that block rooting benefit from any of the nefarious activities you mentioned? Those are executed by different organizations, typically.

The problem with banking isn't rooting itself as an attack vector, but the insecurity and laxk of reliability guarantees of rooted phones so that banks rightfully don't want any liability when something goes wrong with their apps.

Phones are portable, and thus more likely to suffer from a physical attack. But that's about it.

It is, and always was a flimsy excuse to the strip user of control over his own device.

"Secure Boot" isn't actually there to protect the device from an attacker. It's there to "protect" the device from its own user. It's used to "secure" DRM schemes and App Store revenue streams.

I don’t get this too. Laptops are just as portable but don’t have this limitation (yet). This argument that it’s to protect banking and music apps is silly, those products work fine on pcs while maintaining security.

To clarify, that line was implying something that makes a big impact:

    It is impossible to protect [the owner from accessing] data on rooted phones

Magic rock complicated. Grog say Grug too dumb to do magic rock right, so only Grog have secret magic rock key.

Grug pay Grog many shiny rock for make magic rock work, or Grog use key and magic rock stop working.

Nothing. They just perceive the users as more stupid and incapable of handling their personal property properly.

If PCs were newly invented today, they may well have been locked down from the start. You already seeing the big names, Apple and Microsoft, with MacOS and Windows, respectively, inching along in that direction.

Rooting certainly blows the Vault eFuse. Knox Vault, etc. are newer than the S4 (Knox Vault was introduced in the S21).

For removing bloatware from the user partition you don't need to root, adb or the universal android debloater will do.

I've been using Xiaomi phones but I had to buy a new phone every year or two just because they get so sluggish. My other Android phones kind of had the same, except my Nothing 2 has been going strong.

Has this been your experience as well, or have your phones been OK with responsiveness? Seven years is a long time, I imagine the phone must have been unusable by then.

This is already in place in the EU via the WEEE directive (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment), but the costs have apparently been absorbed just fine already by this industry, so it doesn't seem to hurt them sufficiently to be incentivized for longevity.

As much as I hate it, the strongest incentive would maybe be to legally define vendors who supply hardware with a non-interchangable OS-ecosystem as service-providers and put restrictions on the price they can charge for the hardware to render the service (like i.e. a cable-modem from an ISP).

This could force the large players to decide between high-margin hardware or high-margin OS-ecosystem instead of aiming for both.

Come to think of it, these market-dynamics would be interesting to observe...

Is any other product forced to do such a thing? Considering a phone lasts for years and is very small, it produces very little garbage over time compared to disposable product people use. Think how big a garbage can is compared to a phone.

Adding cpu instructions is something that you can't physically do, however unlocking the bootloader is something you can do via software, and if a vendor chooses to lock it down they're basically taking away your ability to do anything you would want to do with a device. Sadly this is has been the case for a while and it's probably going to continue being the case.

I don't believe a user lacking the ability to perform a microcode update impacts their freedom in any meaningful way. The CPU still executes whatever instructions it's given unless the user is deprived of that freedom.

I really wanted a Sony phone as it ticked all the boxes. Headphone jack, SD card slot and bootloader unlock with LineageOS support. AFAIK no one else does that in current phones.

But the sad reality hit when there were all kinds of hurdles around getting 5G/4G working in Australia. Was not going to risk ~$900 dollars on a phone that could end up being a paperweight and returned it.

It's a sad state and makes me miss the good old days.

Sony phones generally have a ok-ish hardware(their old 4k oled screen is still top-tier for watch videos to date in my opinion) and emmmm-ish software support. And depends on your region, the software support can be even worse. For example, TW-version sony phones have a serious delayed update schedule. You may get an update that others already received for half an year (and pixel phones have already got two years ago)

Do they work well on the big US carriers? Especially the ones starting with V?

Though for Americans, Sony sadly doesn't release their phones in the USA anymore

It's not necessarily about it being possible, but the level of support and refinement.

The future I'm seeing is one in which custom ROMs still exist as hobby projects, but aren't suitable for use in "production".

I've owned a few pixels but for whatever reason in my case the hardware had a habit of randomly dying just outside of the warranty period. But maybe I can revisit.

Well, I dunno. I've seen it as a lesser evil compared to many others.

In ye olden times I had such a horrible time with my cheapo Samsung when trying to upgrade it from Android 1.5 to 2.1 that I swore it'd be my last Samsung, and it was, for well over a decade. During that time I went through some iPhones and a handful of the most popular alternative Android brands.

Since the thread is about Android I'll focus on that. Every manufacturer was hamstrung by one or more of the following issues:

- Subpar hardware

- Difficult and slow RMA process where your device flies around the globe for repairs

- Software bloat, just like Samsung, but from a country I trust even less (China vs SK)

- Very infrequent updates (if you are lucky enough to get them at all), especially once a newer model is out

Now since this thread is about bootloaders this is probably a hot take, but I spend enough of my time troubleshooting stuff at work, so when I use my phone I want it to "just work" and not have to play some stupid anti integrity protection cat and mouse game to access my bank's app. So the last two are not solved with an open bootloader.

Samsung on the other hand has in recent years given me the "just works" experience on decent hardware, paired with frequent updates. And while their authorized repair shop might not be in my city, it is at least in my country and just a train ride away.

That being said, the nerd in me is disappointed in this move, and the recent EU ruling that forces manufacturers to actually support the stuff they sell for a reasonable time even after it's off the shelves might change things for the better w.r.t. other manufacturers.

I've got a Samsung dryer and when it had a fault with the door sensor they got it fixed pretty quickly. I had better service from them than Bosch or Miele - I replaced a Bosch dryer when I was totally fed up of trying to organise Bosch to fix it and being told it was at least a 6 week wait - Samsung half the price, and surprised us that it is a better dryer (faster, easier to use etc).

I don't love their phones, though my wife has one. However, again on the service front, when my samsung S7 had a problem they fixed it pretty quickly. When my iPhone 5 came with the wifi not working it took weeks to convince Apple that it was actually broken and get a replacement.

All anecdotal of course, and probably varies a lot by location and over time.

It's actually incredible how consistent they are with it. I'm hesitant to buy a foldable or a display from them for this very reason, even though I'd be otherwise interested.

Is the alternative really better overall. We upgraded to a samsung fridge last year from two consecutive cheapo-chinese-local walmart-brands and it was worth every penny. It will pay itself in energy savings in less than two years.

I think their phone in the high end is the best phone on the market, unless ios is a requirement for you. Also, I bought a Samsung AC and really like the smart features. Really nice integration with Alexa too.

They seem to skip some years when bringing updated models to the US for some reason, but Sony Xperia phones check most of these boxes. I have an Xperia 1 V that I use as an app dev test device and as a backup phone and have found it pretty nice. The hardware feels great and their Android build isn’t nearly as junked up as Samsung’s. I’m always surprised they aren’t more popular.

Which of their phones have all of these?

  > samsung is the only smartphone manufacturer that still makes phones (though not many) with all the features I want

> microSD slot

That stopped from S21 on.

> side-mounted fingerprint reader

It is in the screen since S10?

> headphone jack

Not since S20.

Just speaking of the Galaxys of course.

I try to avoid big <anything> manufacturers by default.

Either freedom or zip. I'd sooner bang rocks together than use a phone I can't compile the OS for. The number of required binary blobs is a foul enough insult already.

You can always move to a phone that runs on mainline Linux proper.

I did this. I got an open box Pixel 9A at Best Buy for $450 about a month ago. I immediately installed GrapheneOS on it.

Google's own Pixel devices have easy unlocking, so this would surprise me. Google's strategy to keep devices users actually control from being too mainstream is remote attestation.

I'm guessing this is your post? Way too anacdoal to make generalizations to OneUI 7.0 as a whole (and, expecting the demands to work in a community forum is funny, and, was the prompt "hey chatGPT, write a frustrated forum post?")

I just unlocked the bootloader on my Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 today (which was a nightmare to do btw.). Why did I unlock it? The device has nice hardware, but is stuck with Android 13 and does not get any security updates either, so flashing a custom ROM is my only chance of having an up-to-date device.

Next step will be to try PostmarketOS and see how that goes

Few, and far fewer than in the early days of Android. It's odd that a company Samsung's size would care about this.

That's very picky. I'm sure there are better ways to solve your problem.

Believe it or not I did consider going the full Apple route. The problem is, Apple doesn't offer anything in the 8 inch zone. I need a tablet that fits into my pant pockets.

And on top of that, there's no way to migrate the data from a bunch of these apps from the Google walled garden to the Apple walled garden, not to mention purchased licenses.

Oppo is Chinese, so is Oneplus, so is Xiaomi - those are what I meant with "alibaba garbage", especially when it comes to performance. I don't trust either of these brands to deliver updates on time or for more than two years, spare parts just the same, and that's before the question if one wants a brand that may be targeted by US sanctions like Huawei, locking the user out of Play Services.

With Samsung there are established networks on how to get spare parts and they have a proven track record of delivering updates on time.

Lenovo's offerings are a disaster performance-wise.

That was it!! How was i supposed to know to swipe down and then right? Grrr!

Apple 1000% datamines you, it's in their ToS that you agree for them to use your data for their own marketing.

What's the cost to develop/maintain/support the feature? It's a simple switch, and since it's probably in AOSP there's cost in removing it, not in leaving it there