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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

#81

Post by Zak »

lostgame wrote: post #65
George83728 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I’m guessing with this you’d use an alternative store like F-Droid instead of the Play Store? Not necessarily, but that's the best way to do it. Between apps from F-Droid and a browser, you don't need any apps from the play store. Your bank doesn't have an app on F-Droid you might say? Well that's what the browser is for.

Ha. Your example is rather specific seeming to me, as I actually work on one of the big 5 Canadian banking iOS apps here in Toronto. For obvious reasons; we don’t ship to alternate stores - even if such a thing as iOS sideloading existed; we wouldn’t support it, and we of course do not support anything but the Play Store on Android. It’s obviously partly a support cost issue - there would be less than 1% of our milli…

> I think for a while we even had some sort of check that would detect a jailbroken iPhone or rooted Android device and attempted to refuse to run on them.

Your uncertainty about this suggests it's not something you decided, but please let anyone involved in making decisions like that know that's a dick move. It's the user's device, not the bank's.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#82

Post by joecool1029 »

rfoo wrote: post #27
joecool1029 wrote: post #4

> Request to Google: ungrey the “OEM unlocking” toggle in the factory, before shipping store.google.com devices to customers. Do not make your customers connect the device to the Internet before they are allowed to install the operating system they want. That won't happen. I can think of two big reasons off the top of my head: 1. Supply-chain attacks, someone gets a hold of the phone before it gets to you and unlocks…

The two reasons are invalid for Pixel phones: 1. Pixel phones display an "unlocked bootloader" warning (which can't be disabled) during boot. In case it is re-locked with an additional signing key installed (Pixel-s are literally the only phones which you can do this currently in the market), a similar screen with the SHA256 hash of the public key is displayed. 2. Unlocking does not void warranty. The only reason Goo…

> 1. Pixel phones display an "unlocked bootloader" warning (which can't be disabled)

Yet. Other manufacturers have the same warning and have had them disabled. (I did it to one of my older moto phones a few years back)

> 2. Unlocking does not void warranty.

Not by itself, but having a signal in place that it was unlocked lets the manufacturer look for common problems caused by doing things like flashing the wrong device images to critical partitions (go search around a bit for people corrupting EFS on their phones).

Critically Pixel devices do not have a debrick tool that's leaked, at least not for the Qualcomm-based Pixel devices. This means that a brick on any of those partitions means the phone needs a trip back to the depot or a service center that has these tools. Can't be fixed by end-user. Maybe this situation has changed for the Tensor/Samsung pixels but the point is screwing up your device due to flashing incorrect images shouldn't be something the manufacturer needs to foot the bill on.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#83

Post by WeylandYutani »

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 ,…

Xiaomi heavily subsidizes their phones. The idea is that they make it back with people using their apps.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#84

Post by Zak »

jvanderbot wrote: post #25
Bran_son wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, security is used as an excuse to lock down more than is necessary. To prevent the supply chain attack you mention, the boot lock just has to be tamper evident, such as showing a "Bootloader unlocked" message during boot. As is already the case in some phones. Additionally, a way to reset to a factory-verified state could undo such an attack. Warranty could also easily be achieved by flipping a non-reversibl…

Pixel's are locked down a very tiny bit , and I don't think this is some kind of dystopian over-reach with security as an excuse. For all the security listed in this thread the whole "I must connect to the internet once" problem is a very fair tradeoff from the user's perspective.

One of the problems with this is that Google can change the behavior at any time. We have no shortage of examples of big tech companies changing something that's valuable to users because it no longer aligned with their business goals.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#85

Post by Dylan16807 »

m_kos wrote: post #64
jesprenj wrote: post #51

I got a Samsung S21 FE 5G as an award on a programming competition. OEM unlocking wasn't even an option in the developer settings until I connected the phone to the internet and set the date to one month in the past (I assume this has something to do with the warranty -- you can't even unlock the bootloader right away). An internet connection was required before even using the phone on the Android initial setup scree…

One thing I find very annoying about Samsung is that it tries to get people to use Bixby (Samsung's "Google Assistant") by remapping their phone's power button to Bixby. Due to the nature of my current project, I talked to many Samsung owners in their 50s and 60s who don't know how to turn Bixby off and, consequently, don't know how to, e.g., shut down or reboot their phones.

Another way of looking at it is they had a bixby button and a power button, and decided to remove the power button.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#86

Post by dingledork69 »

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…

So google is going through all this effort and some guy in China will just bypass the bootloader lock for $30.

There is absolutely no way that the intelligence agencies don't have this same capability, which makes all of this security posturing utterly pointless, other than to prevent regular users from owning their devices.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#87

Post by joecool1029 »

flangola7 wrote: post #16
joecool1029 wrote: post #4

> Request to Google: ungrey the “OEM unlocking” toggle in the factory, before shipping store.google.com devices to customers. Do not make your customers connect the device to the Internet before they are allowed to install the operating system they want. That won't happen. I can think of two big reasons off the top of my head: 1. Supply-chain attacks, someone gets a hold of the phone before it gets to you and unlocks…

2 is probably not legal. The onus is on a manufacturer to prove that the customer's changes caused damage sufficient to negate their warranty responsibilities.

When you buy a new car they have the VIN of the car and log any recall repairs done. So not sure how you think the same wouldn't be legal on a phone?

Having a device in their database as NEVER_UNLOCKED takes away any onus from having to look for this in the first place for a large % of users.

Additionally this is kind of important for a company that's had a history of selling devices with hardware defects. It'd be very useful for them to know the RMA rate and whether damage was caused by such a defect or whether it was from a 3rd party software issue.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#88

Post by dingledork69 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #75
MereInterest wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the servers are running. If the servers deign to give permission to own the device you purchased. If they correctly recognize that this device is owned by the user. After I've purchased the device, the seller has no right to withhold ownership, and the existence of enterprise devices doesn't change that in the slightest.

If the process doesn't work then return it as defective. Transfer of control isn't happening exactly at sale time but a few hours later isn't a big deal. Though of course that depends on it staying unlocked.

And it depends on the user being willing to connect it to the (public) internet without a firewall in between.

I wonder if any of the countries that implement a country-wide firewall block this domain. That would disable bootloader unlocking for the entire country.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#89

Post by metiscus »

solarkraft wrote: post #78
joecool1029 wrote: post #4

> Request to Google: ungrey the “OEM unlocking” toggle in the factory, before shipping store.google.com devices to customers. Do not make your customers connect the device to the Internet before they are allowed to install the operating system they want. That won't happen. I can think of two big reasons off the top of my head: 1. Supply-chain attacks, someone gets a hold of the phone before it gets to you and unlocks…

> someone gets a hold of the phone before it gets to you and unlocks the bootloader and then proceeds to modify or install another OS Doesn't the splash screen clearly show some scary warning when the phone was unkocked? > very likely they want to have it phone back and send a record that it was unlocked so they can deny warranty in cases where user damaged the device through software So burn an e-fuse like Samsung d…

It definitely does. Anytime you reboot under graphene you see what looks like an error message with a web address to visit for several seconds from the phone, before the OS loads.

Re: Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled

#90

Post by tpm »

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 ,…

Luckily there are reputable companies (warranty and all that) that do this as a part of the purchase process.
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