And even when it comes to Galaxies, you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that, you guessed right, has a locked bootloader. (Two phones now, never again).
Comment on Samsung’s One UI 8 might shut down bootloader unlocking on Galaxy phones
artyom@piefed.social 5 days agoThere's definitely no law in the US. In fact the vast majority of Android device bootloaders come locked. Pretty much just Pixels and Galaxies that allow this.
neblem@lemmy.world 5 days ago
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I bought unlocked phones from samsung’s website and got locked bootloaders
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
that probably only means that its carrier unlocked, so that you are not forced to use a specific carrier that someone decided for you.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Exactly, which makes the “you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that” invalid, since its locked bootloader whether or not you get it from a carrier
Eagle0110@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Even the non-carrier variants in the US, misleadingly called “International variants” despite of being regional to the US, have locked bootloader.
neblem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yuck, TIL.
Eagle0110@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yuck indeed.
People tried many ways to get around it, back when I was still using an US variant Samsung Note 9, people went as far as using a leaked engineering/preproduction ROM, which can be flashed using Samsung’s official tool because it does have the correct key for the locked bootloader to accept, being built and compiled by Samsung, and because it’s an engineering ROM it would give you root and everything despite of the bootloader still being locked.
But it was only meant for preproduction for a reason, it is very VERY unstable and not exactly usable for a daily driver lol
So happy I am leaving all that BS from Samsung behind with my current Sony Xperia 1 VI which is bootloader-unlocked and rooted and deeply modded and truly my own device lol
just_another_person@lemmy.world 5 days ago
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
That’s Carrier Unlocking, not Bootloader Unoocking.
artyom@piefed.social 5 days ago
Did you have a question?
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
Yeah they might come locked, but the owner needs to be able to remove that lock if they want to.