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Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

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Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#301

Post by _heimdall »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #141
zeagle wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked my Samsung phones but after the a couple of them went end of life despite being very usable I am never buying one of their devices again and sticking with Pixel. There should be an Android code of ethics or regulation to unlock bootloaders of these devices when discontinued to minimize eWaste.

Why on earth would Google institute a policy that runs completely contrary to the cell phone industry's business model, making their devices as useless as possible as fast as possible? It always cracked me up that Apple gets bashed for planned obsolescence when they support their phones longer than anyone else in the industry.

Apple got caught artificially degrading performance and battery life after a period of time. That really isn't "planned obsolescence" so much as irt is "planned crippling"

Planning for a device's software to be unsupported after a certain period of time, ideally a predefined time made clear up front, is totally reasonable though. Thatjust gets to the question of whether you own a functional phone or a block of hardware that is useful only as long as the company wants it to be.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#302

Post by _heimdall »

Ch4otic wrote: post #140
jacooper wrote: post #99

Honestly be glad that google still allows bootloader unlocking. And the WiFi requirement is very small, and the article is overblowing it.

For all we know it's just Google activating the device to ensure it wasn't stolen and reflashed with another OS. Apple requires a device to be activated before it's usable.

That likely is exactly what's going on. That raises the question though if you really bought a functional phone or not - you may have paid for it but even then it only works if the company is still supporting it and allows you to use it.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#303

Post by _heimdall »

r00tanon wrote: post #101

ELI5 - everything about a phone only works when the carrier allows it to connect to the network. So, the way this is done is to, well, connect to the network and allow the phone to be unlocked - which according to the article is what happened? So the real complaint is that the Pixel can't be loaded with a customized Android OS (or Linux, etc.) without being connected to the internet first and this is bad because the…

I believe the real complaint here is that you can't buy and use a Pixel at all without ending up as a row in Google's database that may include hardware identifiers, network details, you're location, your phone number, etc.

When buying a phone directly from Google you are indeed buying the hardware but you don't actually own the software. The OS will work only if Google still supports it and allows you to use it. The article is raising the point that even if you don't want to use Google's software and instead want to jump straight to your own OS installation you can't avoid their OS initialization steps and any network traffic sent back to Google first

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#304

Post by footlose_3815 »

j1elo wrote: post #48
pbasista wrote: post #38

> connect the device to the Internet before they are allowed to install the operating system they want Phoning home before undertaking such an activity takes away the ownership rights from the customers. They do not actually own these devices even after they have purchased them. The reason is that an important part of their ownership rights, i.e. the freedom to use the software of their choice, has been withheld from…

Xiaomi does the same (or at least did until my latest phone change i.e. around 3 years ago). You must unlock the bootloader before being able to install a custom recovery image such as TWRP, which itself is used to install custom ROMs. This unlock involves: creating a user account in the Xiaomi services website, logging into that account from your phone's system, then having the phone logged in for at least 7 days ,…

I went through this on my POCO F3. I couldn't help but think they were running all kinds of shitty chinese malware on my PII during this time.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#305

Post by BLKNSLVR »

plorg wrote: post #2

The title of the article is misleading. The author says the phone cannot be bootloader unlocked without first connecting to the Internet. Once they have connected they are able to unlock the bootloader.

I understood the title, but only because I already knew that Pixel phones were able to have their bootloaders unlocked, so I assumed there was some kind of bar that had to be jumped.

Support for LineageOS is a key issue for me in the purchase of a phone, so Pixels are desirable as a known quantity. I'm not too bothered about having to "do the thing" because so many other phone brands / models either can't be unlocked easily or aren't supported by LineageOS.

Other comments about Pocophone F1 being compatible with PostmarketOS puts that on my watch list.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#306

Post by windowsrookie »

_heimdall wrote: post #301
KennyBlanken wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth would Google institute a policy that runs completely contrary to the cell phone industry's business model, making their devices as useless as possible as fast as possible? It always cracked me up that Apple gets bashed for planned obsolescence when they support their phones longer than anyone else in the industry.

Apple got caught artificially degrading performance and battery life after a period of time. That really isn't "planned obsolescence" so much as irt is "planned crippling" Planning for a device's software to be unsupported after a certain period of time, ideally a predefined time made clear up front, is totally reasonable though. Thatjust gets to the question of whether you own a functional phone or a block of hardwa…

That is not correct. Apple got caught degrading performance because the batteries were degrading.

This was when Apple was so focused on thinness that they used very small batteries. After a couple of years the batteries were not able to supply enough power to the SOC under full load, so Apple had to underclock the SOC to prevent the phones from crashing.

*I'm not saying that was OK. Apple absolutely should have explained what they were doing instead of hiding it. But after this happened it did force them to install bigger batteries in the newer iPhones.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#307

Post by kristopolous »

HWR_14 wrote: post #256
kristopolous wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how much Google has become just another dickish proprietary corporation. If they could have somehow stayed ~2003 Google...

This is pretty much where Google was obviously going in 2003.

There's examples of companies that weren't like that. redhat, sgi, sun, novell, dec... Becoming another Oracle/Adobe isn't inevitable (and yes, I know the connection between sgi and Adobe)

Then you have firms like Nvidia which regardless what do you think of them you can probably agree they've at least been consistent for the past 25 years

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#308

Post by zzzeek »

sundvor wrote: post #252
zzzeek wrote: post #197

Shrugs I have a pixel 7, have never used this option, I put the phone in airplane mode and was able to flip the "enable OEM unlocking " switch without issue. Granted this phone has had intenet access for months so not sure if it already has decided it's "not a carrier-locked phone ".

The whole point about the article was the ability to unlock without ever having been online.

As I noted in my second sentence.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#309

Post by handity »

fomine3 wrote: post #165
jacooper wrote: post #99

Honestly be glad that google still allows bootloader unlocking. And the WiFi requirement is very small, and the article is overblowing it.

Agreed. It's fine for most cases and keep security and anti-fraud. If they are serious privacy phobia, I don't know why they want to buy Google products.

Counterintuitively, Pixels are great for "serious privacy phobia" people, as they are one of few phones that can be flashed with a custom OS and have the bootloader locked. GrapheneOS only supports Pixels for this reason.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#310

Post by bhelkey »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #146

i was just considering switching to android after hitting “you’ve created too many apps in the last 7 days” and couldn’t build a project in xcode. glad to see that would be a waste of time and that everything sucks.

So you are using an iOS device with a completely locked bootloader but a device phoning home before it unlocks the bootloader is unacceptable?

You have an odd definition of "everything sucks" in android land.

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