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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

I've never heard of this disambiguation. An unlocked cellphone has always meant (1). A rooted or jailbroken phone means (2). For three, why would it make sense for manufactures to advertise a phone with/without a lock screen? It doesn't make sense.

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Advertising isn’t the only context where these terms are used… In usual conversation “is your phone unlocked?” could mean 1 or 3

Alternatively: when Siri tells you "you'll need to unlock your iPhone first", it doesn't mean "please jailbreak your phone".

> In usual conversation “is your phone unlocked?” could mean 1 or 3

Is that really something that gets confused often or any more often than any other disambiguation in the English language?

The FBI famously wanted an iPhone unlocked in the third way.

Just to add to what others have said, the last time I rooted an Android phone (Pixel 6), I had to run:

    fastboot flashing unlock_critical

So it seems that at least in some contexts, "unlock" can refer to the bootloader (sense 2 above).

Also I wasn't as clear as I intended to be with sense 3 above - it might also mean temporarily screen-unlocked, as in "can you please unlock your phone so I can enter my number?".

Android lets you turn off all the lock screen security. Also before smartphones this wasn't even a thing, flip phones didn't even have a lock screen. Don't know if that's changed nowadays.

Sure they had, it was just not in frequent use. See page 75 of manual for SE T68i (2002) for example https://archive.org/details/manualsbase-id-62423/page/74/mod...

Neither of those sound like screen locks, they both mention it only happens when turning on your phone.

The Nokia 3210 had a screen lock although that was designed to stop accidental button presses.

I assume the top reply was referring to "OEM unlocked bootloader/fastboot"

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