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Comment by netdevphoenix | Hacker News Reader

Roms face a different problem: bootloader locking. But the more Android changes drastically, the harder it is to integrate the AOSP changes into the different open projects

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> Roms face a different problem: bootloader locking.

Is that a problem these days? It was over a decade ago that I last needed to jailbreak a phone, nowadays it’s just "I’d like to unlock" "Ok".

That’s possible on very few phones these days. Only a handful of OEMs still ship phones that can be bootloader unlocked at all (at least in the US), and even several of THOSE require phoning home to the OEM to get an IMEI-dependent unlock key to pass to fastboot.

Source: 7 years of running deGoogled Android phones and 11 years of running ROM’d Android phones before recently moving to iOS and giving up.

Just found this [0] in another thread. Some few allow no unlocks, most allow them under certain circumstances. Some few without a waiting period or additional sacrifices.

So not as great as I thought, but also not as bad as you made it seem ;)

[0]: https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame...

Curious, have run GrapheneOS on pixels ? They don't have this issue, though it might change now.

Given that Google itself is the manufacturer of Pixel devices, I wouldn't hold my breath on them allowing you to keep this ability forever

Two of my deGoogled Android phones were Pixels (4a and 7a) and one was a Nexus (6p). I know them well, though I never ran Graphene on them.

Pretty sure I read Google was no longer going to publish device tree sources for Pixel phones, which will make ROM development for them significantly harder, whether or not the bootloader is open.

Not in the US, so might be one of those pesky regulations we have over here.

It is actually getting worse over time imo. In the days of Froyo, you could run Cyanogen easy without needing keys from anyone. Now you got to go to your manufacturer's website to get the key needed to unlock it. Even after you bought the device, you are reliant on the goodwill of the manufacturer to get the unlocking key.

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