The rationale for the hoops and waiting period is IIRC that shady sellers were tampering with phones sold through AliExpress etc.
I don't love the idea of someone else being able to do it before the phone gets to me.
So how do you feel about PCs then? Because most computers sold doesn't have these draconian protections and apparently that has never been an issue.
I wish that it wasn't that way.
I'm still not going to bash the one major company that consistently comes the closest to being as open as I'd want. I'd love it to be better, but I also understand the real and legitimate reasons that it doesn't work out that way.
Try to put those concerns in direct conflict with openness and the outcome is likely to be the worst possible.
> I don't love the idea of someone else being able to do it before the phone gets to me.
At the time it was their phone, and they can still do it by waiting 30 days.
But what does it matter if you're just going to flash your own system anyway? Let them put whatever they want on it as long as you can blow it away and replace it with yours.
And if you're not going to flash it yourself, make sure you buy it from a retailer you trust not to befoul it, or buy direct from the manufacturer. If you don't trust them then you have bigger problems.
And if you want to talk about security, the most secure thing is to make all of the storage easily removable so it can be verified and reflashed from a known-clean device. Which would also make it upgradable, at the expense of an imperceptible single-digit number of grams in weight. That they don't do this is the proof that the other thing isn't really done for security.
Then they sell the phone as a newer/better model than it is, and most users are unaware. If you complain to AliExpress they'll tell you to run AnTuTu or Geekbench, and both of those apps will report fake results.
Scam products will always exist. What makes phones so incredibly different from laptops, desktops, hard drives, cars (where people may claim false mileage numbers), or any other product category with specs which can be faked?
And why is the solution to lock the boot loader, rather than implementing some tamper evidence system? Show a "This phone has been tampered with!" screen on boot if the boot loader has been unlocked, problem solved.
The vast majority of apps won't run on android 4 anymore.
1. crime organization (or governmental org) buys / steals a bunch of phones
2. org opens boxes, tampers with boot loader in such a way that they (and / or the original OEM and / or the original OS vendor) have a persistent remote administration account on phone
3. org then returns phones to supply chain either covertly or off the back of a truck.
4. org leverages remote access to do shady things
5. "the press" finds out that "vendor phones XYZ are trojaned!" and vendor looks like t-mobile for 5-30 hours until people find another cat video to look at.
A theoretical justification of this is that phones are stolen all the time from the supply chain. Making lots require remote activation allows the vendor to kill the stolen phones, reducing their resale market in that part of the stolen phone ecosystem. Another theoretical justification is to "protect" the average buyer who just wants a damned phone to look at cat videos on and maybe call their spouse when they're late; they don't wear boots and don't care about loaders. Just Want Cat Videos.
You (some big name company) hire some company to make 10,000 widgets; your contractors may turn around and make 300,000 widgets sell you the 10,000 widgets per the agreement and sell the other 290,000 into other channels. They may sell the ones that didn't pass QA, they may make ones with cheaper parts, etc.
How do you stop this? See above - the part has to phone home and you can enable it (or not!) because you've got a registry of which things are legit and which aren't.
Also, this lets the companies spy on you. Errr.. Collect telemetry to allow them to improve the product.