Find out how One UI 8 alters bootloader unlocking and what it means for older devices and custom software.
  • anon5621@lemmy.mlEnglish
    71·
    5 个月前

    Era of tinkering, customization for better privacy ,performance is end,each day there less and less phone vendors which let to unlock bootladers,now we left with oneplus,google pixel and xiaomi with 9 circles of hell to unlock it

        • smiletolerantlyEnglish
          13·
          5 个月前

          They don’t let you anymore, do they? There was a whole controversy about the Zenfone 12

          • ximtor@lemmy.zipEnglish
            5·
            5 个月前

            Zenfone 10 already doesn’t unlock.

            Source: got a zf10, thinking i can unlock it, because they were “rereleasing their unlock tool, any moment now” -_-

          • Bloo (they/them)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            5·
            5 个月前

            Oh i didn’t know about that, i bought a zf9 a few years ago, how unfortunate i know they also dropped a bunch of features and crammed a ton of ai garbage on it so i paid it little mind.

      • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 个月前

        As someone who uses Sony Xperia 1 VI, yes can confirm it’s absolutely amazing. Took me less than half a minute to unlock bootloader and root if you don’t count the time for the mandatory wipe when bootloader is unlocked (per Android design), and you literally don’t lose any OS feature other than Sony’s proprietary video enhancement feature (due to DRM key voiding and DRM level demotion with unlocked bootloader), but it’s pretty shitty anyway and only useable with the standard display mode, and if you’re using an Xperia phone you’re probably a photography/cinema/art enthusiast who would much prefer keeping the phone in the color accurate “professional” display mode anyway. And this phone comes with a very clean AOSP-like ROM with minimal customization from Sony (but those they did make are very good QoL features), so most of the Android ROM modding tools designed for Pixel phones would at least have most of the features working on the Xperia phone too, and you dont really need to worry too much about too much unexpected behaviors from OEM customizations with ROM modding, especially compares to the like of Xiaomi phones lol

        But I’m not sure we genuinely have a feature with Sony smartphones. On the newer generation Sony Xperia 1 VII, Sony for the first time outsourced their flagship phones (the Xperia 1 series) to a 3rd party manufacturer instead of making them in factories which Sony owns and have direct control themselves, they have been doing this with their mid-range and budget phones before but this was the first time they did it with their flagship phones, and immediately there have been serious quality control issues resulting to many Xperia 1 VII phones failing prematurely and required motherboard replacement (according to some users who ran into issue early), and Sony later had to launch a whole recall for many of these phones: https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_announces_xperia_1_vii_replacement_program-amp-68647.php

        Issues this serious and this widespread is pretty much unheard of for Sony Xperia flagship models, they may not had the most advanced features or sensible pricing, but they have always been known to have at least some of the best build quality, except longevity issues on the Samsung-made OLED screens on gen V model which was more of a Samsung’s fault and it also affected Samsung’s own phones using the same OLED screens anyway.

        And all this is after they already stopped officially selling smartphones in the US and China markets with the 2024 gen VI model, which are arguably two of the biggest smartphone markets, and with the 2025 gen VII model Sony announced they are significantly downsizing their operation in the EU.

        At this rate, there might now be a new Sony Xperia phone in the next 3-5 years.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 个月前

          I like Sony as well, but you’re right they never really found their place in the smartphone market. Which is a shame, their “dumb” phones were top notch.

          • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 个月前

            I don’t know if they never found a place, they definitely had many phones that were cohesive packages of many features that specifically satisfy the needs of a clearly definable group of people, even if it’s a niche group.

            The question is whether they will be able to maintain that place, and the future seems rather bleak on that lately :(

            • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
              1·
              4 个月前

              Well, I meant some kind of mainstream, financially sustainable market. Their phones are definitely overpriced, which is IMO precisely because of their smaller marketshare.

              And yeah, their mobile division is definitely going down in the near-ish future unless something changes.

              Their pre-smartphone era phones were simply amazing and even the early Android era phones were really great.

    • smiletolerantlyEnglish
      14·
      5 个月前

      Just waiting for the pain to be enough to switch to Linux on a phone.

      Main drawbacks right now:

      • I have one health-related (open source) app that I NEED to work flawlessly
      • Navigating the various UIs seems incredibly awkward and inconsistent
      • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
        6·
        5 个月前

        Have you checked SailfishOS? Their Android-bridge is pretty decent, it might work well. If you tell me the app name, I can check whether it works or not.

        • smiletolerantlyEnglish
          1·
          4 个月前

          Thanks, that is a very kind offer!

          The secific app is xdrip+. But it’s probably not possible to test it out, because starting/working is not the issue, the issue is making sure that it has a 100%% stable background connection with my blood glucose sensor, recovers from failures, restarts in the background on closure,… Eventually, I’ll get my hands on a linux handheld and try for myself :)

          That being said - how’s your experience with Sailfish been so far?

          • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
            2·
            4 个月前

            Ah, in that case it probably won’t work, the Android apps on SFOS don’t have access to Bluetooth, you would need a native one.

            SFOS is fine, I like it, it’s smooth, has sleek UI and generally works very well, sans the occasional bugs. The Android layer is also splendid, though there are cases like this where it simply won’t work. Same with any app needing to pass SafetyNet checks which many bank apps do.

            But if you’re lucky and you don’t need any app with hardware access and your bank doesn’t mind being ran on Google untested device, it’s really great!

            • smiletolerantlyEnglish
              1·
              4 个月前

              Ah, too bad! But thanks, that’s good to know.

              Not gonna lie, I’m a tiny bit jealous of you 😄 It’s gotten to a point where having to use Android is a constant, low-intensity source of stress just because of how closed and privacy-unfriendly it has become.

        • smiletolerantlyEnglish
          2·
          4 个月前

          Ah, true. I honestly think we need to get to a point where smartphones intended for use with linux are profitable / widespread.

          But that’s a catch 22 with UX and HW both being required for companies to invest in the other.

    • 0ops@piefed.zipEnglish
      10·
      5 个月前

      There haven’t been any roms for OnePlus phones in a few years since they stopped publishing the MSM tool for new phones. Iirc, the 9 was their last phone to truly support custom roms.

      Apparently the MSM tool was leaked for the 11, so there are a couple roms for it. But the old OnePlus and their community is unfortunately long dead.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8·
      5 个月前

      Motorola is pretty solid from a bootloader unlock perspective. It is dead simple and some devices support relocking with custom keys.

  • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
    45·
    5 个月前

    Ugh. Samsung already has the worst, most intrusive Android UI. This reinforces my determination to never give them another cent…

  • baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    43·
    5 个月前

    But at least this time it secures the phone against cellebrite & other hacking tools, right? …right?

    (for those unaware: there are tools built by cellebrite and other companies that can dump the internal storage of your phone and decrypt its contents without your consent. they’re in use by most police in the US at least, probably other countries as well and definitely airports. They can hack just about every single phone, except for maybe the newest iphone with a really long pin and advanced protection enabled, and recent google pixels with grapheneos.)

  • limerod@reddthat.comMEnglish
    18·
    4 个月前

    1st they removed the sdcard from the A56, now this.

    Except updates there are even lesser reasons to consider samsung. Especially, when chinese OEMs beat them in the hardware game.

  • hornedfiend@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    17·
    5 个月前

    They were set on doing it when Knox was first introduced anyway.

    Normies don’t give a shit anyway as they see it as a necessary step in securing their own lack of understanding of anything technology, besides brainrot and doomscrolling.

    Thanks for the reminder of why I stopped caring about Samsung phones 10 years ago.

  • Horsey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    5 个月前

    Google needs to get their shit together and put an actually competitive chip in their phones. I’m not buying a late cycle phone with a tensor processor that can’t even match the current snapdragon or A-series.

      • Horsey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 个月前

        I’m definitely keeping my eye out for Oneplus. Problem I had with them before though was that their UI was too flat and lacked transparent flourishes. That should change with iOS 26…

        Also, why is the one plus pad so small…? Their ecosystem needs to be more feature aggressive.

    • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 个月前

      But if they put a sufficiently capable chip in their phone, so that you can actually use your phone as a decent general purpose computer like how a smartphone should be like, they wouldn’t be able to force you to buy their AI services anymore would they? Lol

      Also remember how they had that very big and very clear text in their ChromeOS documentation, that says “ChromeOS is NOT a general purpose computer.”? Oh boy would they not absolutely LOVE to make it exactly the same situation on Android so they can have absolute control over your interaction with the internet and profit, but alas they can’t take away too many general purpose computing features from the Android OS with a version release without losing the entire market lol, so they try it with hardware XD

      • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        5·
        5 个月前

        AOSP is ostensibly dead thanks to Google closing off dev access and consistent abandoning of open source apps in AOSP.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          4 个月前

          It isn’t completely dead since projects like Lineage OS exist

          It takes work to maintain but it seems to be the best option. It is what AOSP used to be.

    • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      4 个月前

      Samsung only had locked bootloader in the US market because of the carrier mafias in the US having wayyyy more power than they should have, even over OEMs. They can’t charge you extra for basic features if you can bypass the artificial locks with root empowered tools, or shove adware/bloatware down your throat if you can remove them, can they?

      All other market’s models always had unlocked bootloader, even their China/Hong Kong and EU models. Although it’s still not entirely open because Samsung have extremely customized ROM, that also have Samsung’s security suite Knox and Samsung Pay deeply integrated all over the place, where a lot of encryption and obfuscation were included, because they are purpose designed security solutions. So with bootloader unlock you are still going to lose a lot of core OS features (even if you don’t actually mod the boot image to have root access, and just have the bootloader unlocked), there are tools that can restore some, but not all features can be restored.

      Well that is, until now, apparently.

      But then, on the other hand, Samsung devices are the closest you can get to Apple’s ridiculous walled garden in the Android ecosystem, so you’d you ever want that nonsense anyway lol

  • idunnololz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    4 个月前

    I have a S24 because it is the smallest phone on the market that year. Can someone please make a small Android phone. I am running out of options 😭