PieFed.WorldOnePlus will limit bootloader unlocking
www.androidauthority.com/oneplus-bootloader-unl…
“OnePlus has announced a new system that limits who can unlock the bootloader on their phones. Stating reasons such as “data security” and an enhanced “system stability” […]. OnePlus has introduced a new procedure where anyone wanting to unlock the bootloader on their devices must first fill out an online request form for “Deep Testing””.
Even if it is for one region, it is still enshitification preventing phones to have custom ROM 🤦♂️
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And people wonder why I want a Linux phone. They're slowly closing the door and it won't ever reopen.
Whaaaat
Mfers I bought the phone, I do whatever the hell i want with it
Not in their eyes.
Phones already literally come with a EULA. The wording may or may not be the same, but the intent is.
You don't own your phone, you silly thing. What you own is an unexclusive and transferrable (for now, Teslas don't even have that for example) licence to use most features of the phone.
i bought it for its cheaper than the flagship phones, im guessing thats why people switch to OP, they probably want people to keep buying thier new phones each cycle, and not have a modded phone that you will stay on forever.
Sure- or they're tired of Samsung's bullshit. I was going to buy the S25 Ultra outright on release day but then they cut the wireless functionality of the S Pen in favor of their bullshit AI so I decided to cut my support for Samsung and bought a OP13 instead.
I was considered the older S ultra, or the budget samsung, but i was swayed away from thier chip designs. i tempted an OP13/R, but i decided to try out 12r instead to see how the phone was.
Max-PThe writing's been on the wall since they swapped to ColorOS with Android 12 and the bootloader update that came with it that no longer supports relocking, along with the delayed/nonexistent source code releases for the kernel.
It's very sad that basically the only real option is Google's Pixels, and even there the tides are turning.
Sony is still an option! my Xperia is dead easy to unlock and it has a headphone jack and sd card slot. they're just a bit of a hassle to find since they only sell in select markets :p
DrDystopiaI'm satisfied with the relocked bootloader on my Fairphone.
Unless you need fucky security chips made in the land of National Security Letters.
Fairphone4 qualcom no longer updates it's drivers. Might as well be walking around with free access to your phone.
observantTrapeziumHow the mighty have fallen. I got my OnePlus One in 2015 with CyanogenMod preinstalled (although I reinstalled the vanilla OS after, and rooted it easily). Enshitification indeed, no brand is safe.
Ricky RigatoniBootloader apartheid great
Damn that sucks. I only buy phones that allow unlocking. Currently on a OP8T. Probably going used Pixel/GrapheneOS next, but really a usable Linux phone can't come soon enough.
Do you have the beautiful blue one?? That’s the prettiest phone to me! I have one as well but I don’t use it anymore, still have it with Lineage as a backup just in case
It's a kind of turquoise/blue? It is a nice color, but I got that one only because it was cheaper. I keep it in a case anyway :).
isnt google walling in thier OS soon, and it seems other phone makers are following suit.
Yeah, seems like bad times ahead. Definitely looking forward to that Linux phone.
i considered doing it, but im not a tech saavy person so i just use the stock android on OP12R. i just dint like SAMSUNG and pixel, consider thier heavy invesmetn AI, while sacrificing what makes thier phone different.
I've been running GrapheneOS on a pixel8a for about a month now and its fine. Came from iphone so it's probably an easier transition for people who have used android before.
Was a OnePlus user for years. Had the original device, the 3, 5 and the 7 pro since launch. I replaced the battery in my 7 pro and put lineage on it just to keep it going.
My idiot brain jumped off a boat last week with it in my pocket and I assumed I would just get the new one. But no unlockable bootloader means I need to look elsewhere.
One Plus was really impressive at first but like everything, at some point companies want to make a profit. I also had the original and the 3, but that was it.
true, OP was your semi-budget phones with some of the flagship feature, that was thier selling point. im guessing if samsung, and google is locking down thier phones, OP thought it can force people to constantly get newer phones down the line.
ShimitarNothing phone seems to be the best choice today. A few models, so notmuch choice, but solid hardware unbloated android and unlockable bootloader.
I own a 3a and am pretty happy. Bulky and heavy tough.
The Phone 1 and 2 have official lineage os support as well. Nothing is still bootloader unlock friendly (for now). Phone 3 is too new for LineageOS but is still an excellent phone with a good development community on their forums.
Very few remain, and we lost another one.
That is the underlying chip makers trying to destroy aftermarket cannibalization by force obsoleting the devices.
If we had competent governance we'd crack these parasitic corporations wide open.
They lived long enough to become the villain
They got purchased by Oppo
They were always an oppo spinoff, and after capturing their customer base they got spun back in. I hate corporations.
I will limit my purchases of OnePlus equipment.
I can't go below zero
You can prevent friends and family, therefore having a negative impact equivalent to less than 0
Fucking fantastic. /s. This is probably the first step to killing bootloader unlocking entirely and that could be a real problem because to the best of my knowledge that would leave Google and maybe Fairphone as the only two possibilities in existence until Graphene launches a device
Motorola still allows unlocks, but they don't have re-locking capabilities under custom keys.
Motorola does conditional bootloader unlocks, you need to have your device connected to the internet for roughly 7 days after you bought it, in order to have the "OEM unlocking" option available. Then you have to request a bootloader unlock key through their website which requires a Lenovo ID account.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but at any of those steps they can make shit worse (like Xiaomi did).
To my knowledge the only brand which lets you unlock your bootloader without a fuss is Nothing. Sony and Fairphone are on close second but there you still need to request a bootloader unlock key.
Oh yeah, I forgot about them. Question is, how well does custom ROMs work with media tech chips? Because from what I understand, a lot of Motorola's are now using media tech. And I have not seen many custom ROMs work with them.
Google don't restrict unlocking the boot loader. I just checked on my Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the OEM unlocking toggle is still there. The only barrier is enabling developer options by repeatedly tapping the build number in settings/about phone, just like it always has been
You can only relock the bootloader with a signed OS image loaded
Boooooo, not cool!!
While not ideal, it's also not the end of the world.
It's the camel's nose under the tent.
Hopefully this is as far as it goes and not something they will continually restrict each year. This feels similar to the Xiaomi situation which seems to have had the same problems in China, but have gradually restricted unlocking more and more.
this is garbage and backwards
Adding OnePlus to my blacklist, next to Samsung.
Any others I need to add?
Xiaomi recently blocked bootloader unlocking and even before that it was a convolute process were you made a request using a app of theirs and had to wait one week before the phone was unlocked.
For some devices
Agreed on the process being convoluted.
plus, app is poorly translated, half baked pile of garbaage that some time just didn't work
so Your one week could easly turn in to 3, or if You're unlucky, like me - 6 weeks
Is Daddy Google making them do this under the excuse of "data security"? It's a bit sus that they've all "decided" to do it of their own volition.
Plus Google has locked a bunch of stuff out of the open source versions now, so it's likely only a matter of time before it's effectively useless.
FFS. Who the hell is even left that allows unrestricted bootloader unlocks? Sony?
E: oh, Pixels too I guess
Fairphone?
I had the 5 but really everything after 1 was aafter they had become just as bullshit as the competition
I switched to Nord after running my 3T down and I'm really happy, I got a great upgrade in hardware AND no shitty curved screen for 1/3rd of the price.
I kinda want a phone in the exact shape of the oneplus one but with current wifi and recent ish processor. When I got the 5 I gave the 1 to my brother who proceeded to drop it at work and run over it with a forklift. The screen cracked and the wood back plate broke but the phone still worked. Some months later he got the 5t and ran over that too but it was decimated.
We should use the term "licensing" a phone over "buying". Because this shit ain't buying if I am, the device owner, can't do shit they want to their phone cuz random big companies needs to protect the apps (aka spyware) from users.
The CCP does not want people running things like GrapheneOS, so this is not surprising.
Boo
I just stopped buying Android devices. Now I inherit old ones that other people would have thrown out. They are ok if you didn't pay for it.
As someone who just tried daily driving a non-unlocked phone for the first time in 10+ years, I'm interested in seeing some development in the direction of sandboxing. Not sure how stuff works in GrapheneOS for example (haven't tried it) and haven't delved into too much details of AOSP either, but I think it makes sense - make sure that system and sensitive apps are not possible to tamper with even if you want to, and run everything else in a separate space that you can have root access to. Would be nice, although realistically I don't see this happening outside of some developer-focused device.
But yeah, even if I don't want to unlock, I'd prefer having the peace of mind that I can if I decide to. Haven't tried OnePlus so far, and this here makes is much less likely that I would in the future.
Definitely check out GrapheneOS. It pretty much addresses what you're asking about, aside from root access.
One of the reasons for me to try staying stock/non-rooted was finance/banking apps, Google Wallet and so on - if it ever worked while rooted, it was a cat and mouse game on each update. GrapheneOS doesn't work for that. Also, it being limited to only Pixel phones is not ideal. But yes, my old (and still working) phone is a Pixel, so I might give it a try just out of curiosity.
I don't know much about hacking, but it's surprising to me that there's not a way to get around this. What stops people from developing a forced workaround? What would need to be done to develop one?
Edit: Answering my own question, sort of, it seems that a locked bootloader uses cryptographic keys stored on the device, so the problem becomes a typical key brute forcing scenario. What a mess. It's so annoying that there aren't more "touchscreen handheld computers" where you can just install whatever you want on them the same as building your own PC. I hate how everything like that is being chipped away over time.
Stuff like this seems promising though in a very far-out, push-comes-to-shove kind of way:
https://www.synacktiv.com/en/publications/how-to-voltage-fault-injection#protect
There's also the fact that if you did crack the encryption, they would pull a Nintendo and sue you for it. Modifying your own devices is still not technically legal in most of the US, and I imagine corporate money keeps it that way in much of the rest of the world as well.
They are going out of business and should be considered compromised by piracy. Buying a One Plus is supporting a global criminal organization.
Any citations?
I haven't been paying attention to OnePlus specifically, but haven't heard about any of this.
The article... Locking the bootloader is ceasing to sell a product that can be owned. It is a rental controlled by someone else actively, not just passively through a proprietary orphan kernel. It is action taken to filter, manipulate, and exploit. That is actually a soft coup against democracy itself, if you grasp the role of informed autonomous citizens and the reason ignorance is never an excuse in a democracy. The mechanism of trust is a fascist tool that is diametrically opposed to a liberal democracy. Trust in the chain of information flowing to a citizen is to subjugate and steal the right of citizenship. This is fundamentally simple with enormous implications. The naive stupidity of people blind to this fundamental issue is truly sad. The transition to actively exploiting the device, is to surrender democracy to a traitorous pirate if you purchase one of these. It is not small thing to shrug off. This is a pivotal moment and issue that will create an unimaginatively dark dystopia. The problem with coups is only the speed at which they are executed. This is a foundational cornerstone taken slowly where people are far to stupid to see it and resist in time to make a difference.
That catastrophizing, incoherent, word salad, is some truly impressive nonsense.
You forgot your meds