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Samsung Removes Bootloader Unlocking with One UI 8

287 points by 1una 1y ago

Speedy218 1y ago
This seriously pisses me off. We are literally watching the end of true ownership of our phones end right before our eyes, imagine if your laptop or new motherboard you purchased from MSI or whoever did the same and locked the bootloader to only allow booting official Microsoft-signed code (aka Windows only) and if you wanted to run Linux... sorry but no that's what we decided and we know better than you. Despite custom OS support being grainy in phones due to proprietary hardware and ARM chips, I really care about having the option to be able to do it (plus rooting with tools like Magisk is pretty universal across phones anyways since it lets you patch most firmware images). It was already bad with Huawei stopping their unlock program and Google cracking down more on rooting by introducing strong integrity with their new Play Integrity API (which was an upgrade from the older SafetyNet API), basically meaning there is hardware security called the TEE (ARM TrustZone for most phones if you're interested in reading more) built into the ARM processor which "snitches? (lack of better word)" on you if the firmware booted no longer matches the manufacturer signed firmware, and causes you to fail strong integrity which means apps like bank apps can choose to deny you service (Google Wallet does this for NFC payments). There are workarounds which the custom ROM/root community still uses which mainly relies on older leaked cryptographic signing keys from the TEE being used which bypass the phone's TEE and sign the "integrity verdict" in user land to say "all is good" to Google, but Google can easily tell if these keys have been compromised since they track usage, and the storage of these keys just keeps getting better, getting as close to impossible as you can in a modern phone since to extract it would require you to quite literally de-lid the ARM chip and hope you don't break anything in the process while somehow extracting the key, in other words not feasible. This is all great when it comes to security which Google and all manufacturers have been pushing on, but it comes at a serious cost of ownership, you cannot tell me we truly own our phones when we have literal hardware protection that, quoted right from wikipedia: "code integrity prevents code in the TEE from being replaced or modified by unauthorized entities, which *may also be the computer owner itself*". I don't know about you but a chip (and Google) that dictates what I can and cannot do with my phone doesn't sound like ownership to me. All these recent changes and events sounds to me that Google is actively pushing and "encouraging" phone manufacturers to disable bootloader unlocking, we're constantly seeing manufacturers which were once before root and unlock friendly randomly changing their mind and quietly removing or severely limiting that feature in the background (Huawei, Xiaomi, now Samsung, etc). You have to remember these manufacturers won't back down from what Google tells them to do if it's for "security" since they're all in each other's pockets so they won't pushback without a good reason. And if you want to use the typical excuse "allowing bootloader unlocking is unsafe", we've already proved it can work quite well while maintaining security as demonstrated by UEFI's Secure Boot which allows you to enroll custom boot keys (should you wish), while keeping some popular default keys such as Microsoft for Windows, and allowing you to lock the entire firmware config behind a password (which is stored in a security chip in modern motherboards so you can't use the old trick of removing the CMOS battery). That's more security than any regular citizen might need. This TEE thing is all about control. Google and manufacturers don't like people installing custom firmware or rooting because then they can't keep you in their ecosystem to keep taking your data and hoping you eventually buy something from them. Some app developers also think this locking down of phones is great in order to protect their app against abuse than actually investing in good backend security which I just find to be hilarious. I hope some laws get passed to protect us from the 1984 book that society is starting to become thanks to the government and corporate conglomerates themselves, although I sadly find that to be unlikely.
stavros 1y ago
More devices we no longer own and that are bound to become trash in a few years, and for what reason? So companies can make more profits?
- baq 1y ago
  They should be economically incentivized to pick up their trash.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    Is any other product forced to do such a thing? Considering a phone lasts for years and is very small, it produces very little garbage over time compared to disposable product people use. Think how big a garbage can is compared to a phone.
    - baq 1y ago
      I dump a whole bin of paper every two weeks; most of it is recyclable. Phones are electrowaste. Recyclability of electronics is... not good.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    This is already in place in the EU via the WEEE directive (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment), but the costs have apparently been absorbed just fine already by this industry, so it doesn't seem to hurt them sufficiently to be incentivized for longevity. As much as I hate it, the strongest incentive would maybe be to legally define vendors who supply hardware with a non-interchangable OS-ecosystem as service-providers and put restrictions on the price they can charge for the hardware to render the service (like i.e. a cable-modem from an ISP). This could force the large players to decide between high-margin hardware or high-margin OS-ecosystem instead of aiming for both. Come to think of it, these market-dynamics would be interesting to observe...
- jjbinx007 1y ago
  I decided to part with my Huawei Mate 20 X after about 7 years of ownership not because it was a bad phone - on the contrary, it has a nice big screen, decent enough camera, is still plenty fast enough etc - but because the OS hadn't received any updates in a long time. Rather than see it go to landfill I donated it to a friend who's happy to use it but what an absolute waste. Bought a Pixel purely because they are committed to updating their phones for a long time.
inoperable 1y ago
And fuck you over with data mining everything all the time without you having any means to cut it out
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Doesn’t seem to be any vendor option to avoid this other than Apple, or the niche guys like Fairphone.
  - delfinom 1y ago
    Apple 1000% datamines you, it's in their ToS that you agree for them to use your data for their own marketing.
sn0n 1y ago
dont worry, samsung knows only 300 people will actually care. As for me, I already swore off Samdung for their whole Samsung account bs and apps they bundle and won't let me remove (or disable).
- crinkly 1y ago
  Yep. Everyone I know who bought a Samsung anything (TV/Phone/Washer/Dryer) last time said it's their last Samsung product. Samsung sure know how to piss off customers.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    It's actually incredible how consistent they are with it. I'm hesitant to buy a foldable or a display from them for this very reason, even though I'd be otherwise interested.
  - cudder 1y ago
    Well, I dunno. I've seen it as a lesser evil compared to many others. In ye olden times I had such a horrible time with my cheapo Samsung when trying to upgrade it from Android 1.5 to 2.1 that I swore it'd be my last Samsung, and it was, for well over a decade. During that time I went through some iPhones and a handful of the most popular alternative Android brands. Since the thread is about Android I'll focus on that. Every manufacturer was hamstrung by one or more of the following issues: - Subpar hardware - Difficult and slow RMA process where your device flies around the globe for repairs - Software bloat, just like Samsung, but from a country I trust even less (China vs SK) - Very infrequent updates (if you are lucky enough to get them at all), especially once a newer model is out Now since this thread is about bootloaders this is probably a hot take, but I spend enough of my time troubleshooting stuff at work, so when I use my phone I want it to "just work" and not have to play some stupid anti integrity protection cat and mouse game to access my bank's app. So the last two are not solved with an open bootloader. Samsung on the other hand has in recent years given me the "just works" experience on decent hardware, paired with frequent updates. And while their authorized repair shop might not be in my city, it is at least in my country and just a train ride away. That being said, the nerd in me is disappointed in this move, and the recent EU ruling that forces manufacturers to actually support the stuff they sell for a reasonable time even after it's off the shelves might change things for the better w.r.t. other manufacturers.
saidinesh5 1y ago
Pixel stopped providing device trees, kernel history, Samsung has been doing this for a while now. Which are the devices/vendors that still allow / encourage this? Even Graphene OS reported that they're in talks with some vendor... Have there been any updates towards that? The main reason i used to root devices are: * Get longer support/OS updates than what the vendor provided * System level adblock using adaway * Titanium backup These days firefox/brave browser gets me half way through adblocking and i lost interest in the ad filled apps.. Syncing gets me good level of syncing for backup on my NAS etc .
- strcat 1y ago
  > Even Graphene OS reported that they're in talks with some vendor... Have there been any updates towards that? The startup we were working with before went bankrupt. In June, we started working with a major Android OEM which has provided resources for identifying everything which will need to be done to meet our requirements and provide official GrapheneOS support. They believe they can meet all our official requirements without much trouble and they're going to determine how much resources they want to put into it soon. We don't yet know how many resources are going to go into it. > The main reason i used to root devices are Note using GrapheneOS does not involve rooting. > System level adblock using adaway You can use RethinkDNS for filtering combined with still using a WireGuard VPN or multiple chained WireGuard VPNs. Android has a perfectly good API for this. > Titanium backup GrapheneOS has a built-in encrypted backup system we plan to significantly improve upon. The basics are there already.
- pentamassiv 1y ago
  Fairphone does! https://www.fairphone.com/en/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-fairphone/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-f...
  - lordofgibbons 1y ago
    Do anyone know why GrapheneOS doesn't support fairphone?
    - 1y ago
guerrilla 1y ago
Exactly. This is why I won't buy from these companies even when conditions look good. It'll be bait and switch every sigle time. Fairphone all the way.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  When Fairphone comes out with a phone with an EMR stylus built in, I'll be the first in line.
  - guerrilla 1y ago
    That's very picky. I'm sure there are better ways to solve your problem.
    - dotancohen 1y ago
      Jim not sure what you're getting at. Right now I'm stuck in the Samsung ecosystem because the S Ultra devices are the only devices that have a built in EMR stylus. They're great devices, I'm not complaining, but diversity and other options would be nice.
altairprime 1y ago
Given the timing, it’s likely related to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  Unlikely, bootloader unlock is a controlled process and state of the OS for many years now. The procedure explicitly hands over the responsibility of OS-integrity to the end-user, it's not Samsung's responsibility after that and the user needs to confirm that. It's much more likely that the cost/benefit profile to develop/maintain/support that feature and its related unlock-process is simply not sufficient, all while several of the biggest customers explicitly require unlock to NOT be supported.
  - g-b-r 1y ago
    What's the cost to develop/maintain/support the feature? It's a simple switch, and since it's probably in AOSP there's cost in removing it, not in leaving it there
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      The cost is in managing a permitted device-state without a full trust-chain, and maintaining the unlock-logic and service of such an unlock of a device. It should be simple, but since some carriers required BL-unlock to not be supported at all, many carriers required the availability of a list of all devices being unlocked and all required unlock to be irreversible, there are quite a few considerations to keep this working securely whenever something is touched in the trust-chain of a device. I hate to say it in this case because I was advocating for BL-unlock for YEARS, but if there's no sufficient commercial demand and no "higher motivation" to justify it, it's a security-risk that's easy to avoid and easy to descope...
      - g-b-r 1y ago
        I don't understand your points, to my eyes if the bootloader is unlocked you simply either: - don't provide the features for which you require a locked bootloader - and don't do anything with the rest of the features And anyhow, I'm almost sure that this is AOSP code (with a quick search I didn't manage to find it). And, I don't know any carriers that require a locked bootloader outside of the US, and Samsung already only sold models without bootloader unlocking in the US.
aeblyve 1y ago
The writing's been on the wall for custom ROMs in general for a while, so I've been starting to think about a mobile phone vendor I could actually have a decent business relationship with. I.e. use their stock ROM and be fairly happy with it. Any opinions? Samsung was a candidate for their somewhat unified ecosystem. Maybe even apple.
- DobarDabar 1y ago
  Check Nothing
- bestouff 1y ago
  Whatever floats your boat. I'll remain with the latest vendor making custom OS possible. FYI Pixels still allow flashing custom ROMs, they've just slightly inconvenienced developers.
  - aeblyve 1y ago
    It's not necessarily about it being possible, but the level of support and refinement. The future I'm seeing is one in which custom ROMs still exist as hobby projects, but aren't suitable for use in "production".
    - npteljes 1y ago
      In this domain, things change so fast that I decided to just focus on my next phone, or like the following 2-3 years. The future is as bleak for the custom ROMs as is their past. They are aftermarket modifications of the phone software, entirely dependent on the manufacturers and Google, and these release new things yearly. Pixels are a good choice I think because they come with the least amount of bloat, and with Android, the connection to Google is always there anyways.
    - subscribed 1y ago
      You still don't get any better support than with Pixel though. I wish it was different. And I'll be using my Pixel 9 with GOS until its no longer supported (so several more years), and if then there are no viable Android options? Well, so be it, iOS (which i despise but Android with Google pervasive surveillance is unusable. I know, iOS is not much better but at lease is about as secure as gos).
rickdeckard 1y ago
It is really a pity, as this means Android OS is closing down. Without supported Consumer Hardware available on the market in sufficient volume, even less end-users will use an alternative OS, which will affect quality and size of the alternative OS-market and fragment the remaining users even more. This will put the future of the entire alternative-OS ecosystem firmly back into the hands of Google. If they start further restricting BL-unlock on the Pixel-series to e.g. only Google Developer Account-Holders, the whole ecosystem will finally close down.
- kotaKat 1y ago
  I’ve always said that it’s been “Google’s Android”, and wellp —- Welcome to Google’s Android, where the garden walls have been turned into a razorwire fence and you’re not welcome to leave. It’s really funny that Apple’s finally allowing carefully controlled access outside of their own fences and slowly adding more APIs and expansion (hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU) while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    Of course it's been Google's Android, I don't think anyone ever questioned that. The whole reason why the OS still lives as a single entity and the app-ecosystem is not completely fragmented is due to Google's governance to keep it in check. All the stuff Apple now slowly starts to allow on iOS due to EU's Digital Markets Act is still just scratching the surface of what Android already supports. > hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU They provide third party API's to use APPLE's RCS-Service. The alternative would have been to support registering alternative RCS-services as default on the OS (and then, allow the user to choose a service). > while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it Android already allows to install and configure alternative applications for RCS, in fact Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices.
    - kotaKat 1y ago
      > Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices No? They’ve switched to Google Messages, and most/all carriers have switched to Google Jibe RCS (again, Google forcing its services into operator hands), which basically forces SafetyNet attestation to use.
ptrl600 1y ago
Been compiling and running lineageos for nigh on five years now. Attention corporate tyrants: I will never give up.
- aeblyve 1y ago
  Seems you may have to start getting good at SMD rework soon.
  - ptrl600 1y ago
    Either freedom or zip. I'd sooner bang rocks together than use a phone I can't compile the OS for. The number of required binary blobs is a foul enough insult already.
  - Hackbraten 1y ago
    You can always move to a phone that runs on mainline Linux proper.
    - aeblyve 1y ago
      Not seriously, IMO.
      - Hackbraten 1y ago
        I have been daily driving one for two years.
        aeblyve 1y ago
        Did you spend a few thousand on a purism, tolerate the woeful hot and slow character of a pinephone, or something else? Less sardonically: I am a Linux Person but couldn't imagine really using one of those things today. It would probably kneecap my whole life in subtle ways; in the US using android already does.
        1y ago
Zak 1y ago
I have to wonder what Samsung's motivation is here. Of course they probably have some bloatware they profit from, but someone who plans to unlock the bootloader just won't buy their device now. Samsung only benefits if they lose money on device sales (do they?) and make it up on "services".
- worldsavior 1y ago
  How many people are there that unlock their bootloader?
  - Zak 1y ago
    Few, and far fewer than in the early days of Android. It's odd that a company Samsung's size would care about this.
    - worldsavior 1y ago
      No I'm talking about what you said about someone not buying their phone because of bootloader locking. Majority of the majority don't care about the bootloader, so is Samsung.
      - Zak 1y ago
        My point isn't that it will cost them sales in an amount they care about. My point is that someone at Samsung made an active choice to remove unlocking, presumably thinking that choice would bring some benefit to Samsung's business. I'm curious as to what they believe that benefit to be.
  - edelhans 1y ago
    I just unlocked the bootloader on my Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 today (which was a nightmare to do btw.). Why did I unlock it? The device has nice hardware, but is stuck with Android 13 and does not get any security updates either, so flashing a custom ROM is my only chance of having an up-to-date device. Next step will be to try PostmarketOS and see how that goes
zxcvgm 1y ago
Xiaomi apparently have also stopped unlocking their bootloaders, so the "workaround" was to go to an official store and ask them perform a downgrade, and before the staff can relock the bootloader, grab the phone and run: https://x.com/kobe_koto/status/1949154478298456531 https://x.com/kobe_koto/status/1949154478298456531 Absolutely hilarious.
- sunaookami 1y ago
  It's still possible outside of China but you have to have a Mi account and for newer phones you have to make some forum posts or some dumb shit.
  - ralferoo 1y ago
    I did that years ago when I bought a Redmi Note 4 in Shenzhen and discovered that the Chinese ROM is very locked down. I created the Mi post, but I don't remember having to make a forum post (although it does ring a slight bell). AFAIK it was just sending a DM to support on the forum / app to explain why you needed to install the Global ROM rather than the Chinese ROM (and being a foreigner was accepted as a valid reason). About a day later they unlocked the phone bootloader remotely, and then I could install any version of the Global ROM I wanted. I've bought all my subsequent ones (Note 5, Note 8, Note 11, Note 12Pro) in either HK or UK so they all came with the Global ROM, and I've not felt the need to unlock any of them, so not tried to process since. But it definitely used to be pretty easy. I suspect the reason for the weird process is legal to ensure that phones in China don't get unlocked in order to circumvent content controls.
  - unaindz 1y ago
    I dont think you need to do the forum posts but you need to request unlocking every two days and pray it works. Supposedly at 00:00 chinese local time for any chances of getting permission. Took me several months of trying non continuously.
    - climb_stealth 1y ago
      So you were actually successful in the end? I've given up on it. With the time difference I had to do it at 3am or something ridiculous like that. They have effectively disabled bootloader unlocking. They can kindly fuck off. Compared to my previous Xiaomi, which required an account of a certain age and active phone use. But after that the unlocking just worked.
nunez 1y ago
As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is, by far, the biggest seller of Android phones in the US. (I think Xiaomi is the biggest globally), so they are under much more pressure to clamp down on this. That said, rooting Samsung devices has been a worthless pursuit for a long time. Doing so irreversibly (via eFuse) disables KNOX, which prevents DeX and Samsung Health from working. It also trips SafetyNet, which disables a whole suite of key apps (banking apps and Apple Music don't work; not sure about Spotify). There's a Magisk module that uses well-known device IDs to work around these, but these only work temporaily. Many people have also reported issues with the camera (a popular reason for buying Samsungs in the first place), and you no longer get OTA updates. I believe you also get degraded camera performance if you flash another ROM since the device module is closed-source and relies on One UI to work. This is before considering that stock ROMs have gotten really good over the years (especially Samsung's), and many of the reasons why we had to root have mostly gone away. You can work around this by buying a Pixel for now, but I think we're a few years away from bootloader unlocking going away entirely. That said, I stll root Android devices that will only serve a single-purpose, like my BOOX eBook readers that I use Firefox on. This lets me run AFWall so that I can block network traffic for everything except Firefox (and a few other apps). However, I won't be logging into my Google account on them, and they aren't ever going to run banking apps or anything like that.
- ranger207 1y ago
  > It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones What makes securing rooted phones different from securing rooted PCs?
  - ACCount36 1y ago
    Phones are portable, and thus more likely to suffer from a physical attack. But that's about it. It is, and always was a flimsy excuse to the strip user of control over his own device. "Secure Boot" isn't actually there to protect the device from an attacker. It's there to "protect" the device from its own user. It's used to "secure" DRM schemes and App Store revenue streams.
phkahler 1y ago
Samsung also removed my flashlight recently. The whole pull-down that contained it is gone. Not sure what they're thinking over there.
- WXLCKNO 1y ago
  You're gonna have to explain that one. Do you mean the new One UI update that made the notification pull down split into left and right swipes instead swipe down and then swipe down again? Because if that's what you mean, you can configure it to be the way it used to be again. Little pencil button, then panel settings and choose together instead of separate.
  - phkahler 1y ago
    That was it!! How was i supposed to know to swipe down and then right? Grrr!
    - WXLCKNO 1y ago
      Glad I could help :) I think they have like a one time pop up to explain which is easy to miss.
- cheeze 1y ago
  ... Use the edit functionality to add it back? I assure you that Samsung doesn't care to remove your... flashlight. This likely just got removed from a fat finger/phone being on in your pocket/etc.
npteljes 1y ago
I'm surprised they let it go on as long as they did.
mschuster91 1y ago
Normally, I'd go and say "vote with your wallet" - but sadly, in the tablet sphere, it's either ultra low spec Alibaba junk or it's Samsung. No Fairphone, no Pixel, nothing. Seriously Samsung, go and screw yourselves. The reason I insist on rooting in the first place is because unlike iOS which has a true full backup that you can trigger from your Mac (and restore afterwards), Android decidedly does not, and a bunch of apps don't do any kind of cloud sync.
- cheeze 1y ago
  Even then, Samsung lags hard in the tablet space. IMO there is kinda only one option... an iPad. It's an order of magnitude better than anything else out there. And that's coming from someone who doesn't really like Apple products. Given that your major reason for rooting is something that... Apple solves for. Maybe there is another option?
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    Believe it or not I did consider going the full Apple route. The problem is, Apple doesn't offer anything in the 8 inch zone. I need a tablet that fits into my pant pockets. And on top of that, there's no way to migrate the data from a bunch of these apps from the Google walled garden to the Apple walled garden, not to mention purchased licenses.
    - bpye 1y ago
      Is an iPad Mini too big? That’s an 8.3” display.
      - mschuster91 1y ago
        Interesting, thanks. The price tag is heavy on them though, the Samsung Galaxy Active Tab 5 is at less than 400€, the iPad Mini about 800€.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  there are countless decent android tablet not from Samsung. Lenovo, oppo, oneplus, xiaomi.
foresto 1y ago
Sony Xperia models have been my choice since the Sony Ericsson days. Unlockable bootloader, LineageOS available, microsd card, headphone jack, good screen, decent camera, reasonably powerful SoC, water/dust resistant, and probably several other benefits that I'm forgetting at the moment. I don't know if any US carrier offers them, but last time I was shopping, models with North American radios could be bought online. My main complaints about Xperia phones: - They don't support re-locking the bootloader at all, let alone with custom keys. This could be problematic for folks who depend on mobile banking apps that require full Google Play Integrity (SafetyNet) attestation, or risky for folks who leave their phone unattended around potential adversaries. To be fair, almost all smartphones have this problem. - Their wonderful Xperia Compact line, comprising smaller versions of their flagship phones, seems to have been abandoned. Even their most recent "compact" models were bulky compared to their predecessors.
codedokode 1y ago
It is getting incredibly difficult to obtain a non-backdoored smartphone nowadays. I tried to find which phones support alternative OSes, without Google control and telemetry, but it turned out that alternative OSes (LineageOS, PostmarketOS, Graphenos) support mostly support outdated models and it makes no sense to buy them. There is also "Google Pixel", but the prices start at around $600 which is 3 times more than a reasonable price for a phone. So now I am wondering if it is possible to extract the ROM from a reasonably priced Samsung phone, remove the components I don't like and write it back.
- NoGravitas 1y ago
  GrapheneOS supports the newest Pixels, and only the Pixels that are still getting updates from Google. Right now the least bad option is probably a one-generation-old NOS or Open Box Pixel with GrapheneOS.
  - theandrewbailey 1y ago
    I did this. I got an open box Pixel 9A at Best Buy for $450 about a month ago. I immediately installed GrapheneOS on it.
sersi 1y ago
Damn, I got a samsung instead of an asus phone because I could unlock it. Now what:s left? Really annoyed at all those companies who refuse to let me own my own phone. And before anyone asks me if I really need to unlock my phone... It's the principle of it, if I bought it, I own it and I should be able to run what I want on it. I will not buy a phone from a company that denies me that right. That said, I do use root for a few things: - AFWall+ (previously I used netguard but can't run multiple VPN on android so I couldn't have that running together with tailscale) - Neo-backup. Some messaging apps believe that keeping chat history is not important. Or they believe that it's fine that the only way to transfer chat history is to upload it to Google cloud without encrypting it. I hate losing my chat history and I do not want it uploaded somewhere without encrypting it so I need a backup solution. Enters neobackup - Sometimes, it is useful to be able to spoof one's GPS without the app being the wiser from a privacy perspective. - A very stupid banking app I have prevent screenshots but then doesn't allow me to download a proof of transfer. So I use root to remove the restriction against screenshots
t0bia_s 1y ago
Will this stop you from purchasing a new Samsung device? Yes. I was buying Samsung devices for years because of size (A5, A7, S10e) and ability to unlock bootloader for Lineage OS. Time to look elsewhere.
- metadat 1y ago
  Yep, if Samsung phones are now just as closed as Apple, well.. Android phones certainly aren't superior in many dimensions. Bummer.
Jotalea 1y ago
I never had the chance to root any Android device (unknown models, locked bootloaders, no benefit on rooting, or simply bad hardware), guess I'll never have it again.

287 points by 1una 1y ago

This seriously pisses me off. We are literally watching the end of true ownership of our phones end right before our eyes, imagine if your laptop or new motherboard you purchased from MSI or whoever did the same and locked the bootloader to only allow booting official Microsoft-signed code (aka Windows only) and if you wanted to run Linux... sorry but no that's what we decided and we know better than you. Despite custom OS support being grainy in phones due to proprietary hardware and ARM chips, I really care about having the option to be able to do it (plus rooting with tools like Magisk is pretty universal across phones anyways since it lets you patch most firmware images). It was already bad with Huawei stopping their unlock program and Google cracking down more on rooting by introducing strong integrity with their new Play Integrity API (which was an upgrade from the older SafetyNet API), basically meaning there is hardware security called the TEE (ARM TrustZone for most phones if you're interested in reading more) built into the ARM processor which "snitches? (lack of better word)" on you if the firmware booted no longer matches the manufacturer signed firmware, and causes you to fail strong integrity which means apps like bank apps can choose to deny you service (Google Wallet does this for NFC payments). There are workarounds which the custom ROM/root community still uses which mainly relies on older leaked cryptographic signing keys from the TEE being used which bypass the phone's TEE and sign the "integrity verdict" in user land to say "all is good" to Google, but Google can easily tell if these keys have been compromised since they track usage, and the storage of these keys just keeps getting better, getting as close to impossible as you can in a modern phone since to extract it would require you to quite literally de-lid the ARM chip and hope you don't break anything in the process while somehow extracting the key, in other words not feasible. This is all great when it comes to security which Google and all manufacturers have been pushing on, but it comes at a serious cost of ownership, you cannot tell me we truly own our phones when we have literal hardware protection that, quoted right from wikipedia: "code integrity prevents code in the TEE from being replaced or modified by unauthorized entities, which *may also be the computer owner itself*". I don't know about you but a chip (and Google) that dictates what I can and cannot do with my phone doesn't sound like ownership to me. All these recent changes and events sounds to me that Google is actively pushing and "encouraging" phone manufacturers to disable bootloader unlocking, we're constantly seeing manufacturers which were once before root and unlock friendly randomly changing their mind and quietly removing or severely limiting that feature in the background (Huawei, Xiaomi, now Samsung, etc). You have to remember these manufacturers won't back down from what Google tells them to do if it's for "security" since they're all in each other's pockets so they won't pushback without a good reason. And if you want to use the typical excuse "allowing bootloader unlocking is unsafe", we've already proved it can work quite well while maintaining security as demonstrated by UEFI's Secure Boot which allows you to enroll custom boot keys (should you wish), while keeping some popular default keys such as Microsoft for Windows, and allowing you to lock the entire firmware config behind a password (which is stored in a security chip in modern motherboards so you can't use the old trick of removing the CMOS battery). That's more security than any regular citizen might need. This TEE thing is all about control. Google and manufacturers don't like people installing custom firmware or rooting because then they can't keep you in their ecosystem to keep taking your data and hoping you eventually buy something from them. Some app developers also think this locking down of phones is great in order to protect their app against abuse than actually investing in good backend security which I just find to be hilarious. I hope some laws get passed to protect us from the 1984 book that society is starting to become thanks to the government and corporate conglomerates themselves, although I sadly find that to be unlikely.

stavros 1y ago

More devices we no longer own and that are bound to become trash in a few years, and for what reason? So companies can make more profits?

baq 1y ago
They should be economically incentivized to pick up their trash.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Is any other product forced to do such a thing? Considering a phone lasts for years and is very small, it produces very little garbage over time compared to disposable product people use. Think how big a garbage can is compared to a phone.
  - baq 1y ago
    I dump a whole bin of paper every two weeks; most of it is recyclable. Phones are electrowaste. Recyclability of electronics is... not good.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  This is already in place in the EU via the WEEE directive (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment), but the costs have apparently been absorbed just fine already by this industry, so it doesn't seem to hurt them sufficiently to be incentivized for longevity. As much as I hate it, the strongest incentive would maybe be to legally define vendors who supply hardware with a non-interchangable OS-ecosystem as service-providers and put restrictions on the price they can charge for the hardware to render the service (like i.e. a cable-modem from an ISP). This could force the large players to decide between high-margin hardware or high-margin OS-ecosystem instead of aiming for both. Come to think of it, these market-dynamics would be interesting to observe...
jjbinx007 1y ago
I decided to part with my Huawei Mate 20 X after about 7 years of ownership not because it was a bad phone - on the contrary, it has a nice big screen, decent enough camera, is still plenty fast enough etc - but because the OS hadn't received any updates in a long time. Rather than see it go to landfill I donated it to a friend who's happy to use it but what an absolute waste. Bought a Pixel purely because they are committed to updating their phones for a long time.

inoperable 1y ago

And fuck you over with data mining everything all the time without you having any means to cut it out

trollbridge 1y ago
Doesn’t seem to be any vendor option to avoid this other than Apple, or the niche guys like Fairphone.
- delfinom 1y ago
  Apple 1000% datamines you, it's in their ToS that you agree for them to use your data for their own marketing.

sn0n 1y ago

dont worry, samsung knows only 300 people will actually care. As for me, I already swore off Samdung for their whole Samsung account bs and apps they bundle and won't let me remove (or disable).

crinkly 1y ago
Yep. Everyone I know who bought a Samsung anything (TV/Phone/Washer/Dryer) last time said it's their last Samsung product. Samsung sure know how to piss off customers.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  It's actually incredible how consistent they are with it. I'm hesitant to buy a foldable or a display from them for this very reason, even though I'd be otherwise interested.
- cudder 1y ago
  Well, I dunno. I've seen it as a lesser evil compared to many others. In ye olden times I had such a horrible time with my cheapo Samsung when trying to upgrade it from Android 1.5 to 2.1 that I swore it'd be my last Samsung, and it was, for well over a decade. During that time I went through some iPhones and a handful of the most popular alternative Android brands. Since the thread is about Android I'll focus on that. Every manufacturer was hamstrung by one or more of the following issues: - Subpar hardware - Difficult and slow RMA process where your device flies around the globe for repairs - Software bloat, just like Samsung, but from a country I trust even less (China vs SK) - Very infrequent updates (if you are lucky enough to get them at all), especially once a newer model is out Now since this thread is about bootloaders this is probably a hot take, but I spend enough of my time troubleshooting stuff at work, so when I use my phone I want it to "just work" and not have to play some stupid anti integrity protection cat and mouse game to access my bank's app. So the last two are not solved with an open bootloader. Samsung on the other hand has in recent years given me the "just works" experience on decent hardware, paired with frequent updates. And while their authorized repair shop might not be in my city, it is at least in my country and just a train ride away. That being said, the nerd in me is disappointed in this move, and the recent EU ruling that forces manufacturers to actually support the stuff they sell for a reasonable time even after it's off the shelves might change things for the better w.r.t. other manufacturers.

saidinesh5 1y ago

Pixel stopped providing device trees, kernel history, Samsung has been doing this for a while now. Which are the devices/vendors that still allow / encourage this? Even Graphene OS reported that they're in talks with some vendor... Have there been any updates towards that? The main reason i used to root devices are: * Get longer support/OS updates than what the vendor provided * System level adblock using adaway * Titanium backup These days firefox/brave browser gets me half way through adblocking and i lost interest in the ad filled apps.. Syncing gets me good level of syncing for backup on my NAS etc .

strcat 1y ago
> Even Graphene OS reported that they're in talks with some vendor... Have there been any updates towards that? The startup we were working with before went bankrupt. In June, we started working with a major Android OEM which has provided resources for identifying everything which will need to be done to meet our requirements and provide official GrapheneOS support. They believe they can meet all our official requirements without much trouble and they're going to determine how much resources they want to put into it soon. We don't yet know how many resources are going to go into it. > The main reason i used to root devices are Note using GrapheneOS does not involve rooting. > System level adblock using adaway You can use RethinkDNS for filtering combined with still using a WireGuard VPN or multiple chained WireGuard VPNs. Android has a perfectly good API for this. > Titanium backup GrapheneOS has a built-in encrypted backup system we plan to significantly improve upon. The basics are there already.
pentamassiv 1y ago
Fairphone does! https://www.fairphone.com/en/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-fairphone/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-f...
- lordofgibbons 1y ago
  Do anyone know why GrapheneOS doesn't support fairphone?
  - 1y ago

guerrilla 1y ago

Exactly. This is why I won't buy from these companies even when conditions look good. It'll be bait and switch every sigle time. Fairphone all the way.

dotancohen 1y ago
When Fairphone comes out with a phone with an EMR stylus built in, I'll be the first in line.
- guerrilla 1y ago
  That's very picky. I'm sure there are better ways to solve your problem.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    Jim not sure what you're getting at. Right now I'm stuck in the Samsung ecosystem because the S Ultra devices are the only devices that have a built in EMR stylus. They're great devices, I'm not complaining, but diversity and other options would be nice.

altairprime 1y ago

Given the timing, it’s likely related to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240

rickdeckard 1y ago
Unlikely, bootloader unlock is a controlled process and state of the OS for many years now. The procedure explicitly hands over the responsibility of OS-integrity to the end-user, it's not Samsung's responsibility after that and the user needs to confirm that. It's much more likely that the cost/benefit profile to develop/maintain/support that feature and its related unlock-process is simply not sufficient, all while several of the biggest customers explicitly require unlock to NOT be supported.
- g-b-r 1y ago
  What's the cost to develop/maintain/support the feature? It's a simple switch, and since it's probably in AOSP there's cost in removing it, not in leaving it there
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    The cost is in managing a permitted device-state without a full trust-chain, and maintaining the unlock-logic and service of such an unlock of a device. It should be simple, but since some carriers required BL-unlock to not be supported at all, many carriers required the availability of a list of all devices being unlocked and all required unlock to be irreversible, there are quite a few considerations to keep this working securely whenever something is touched in the trust-chain of a device. I hate to say it in this case because I was advocating for BL-unlock for YEARS, but if there's no sufficient commercial demand and no "higher motivation" to justify it, it's a security-risk that's easy to avoid and easy to descope...
    - g-b-r 1y ago
      I don't understand your points, to my eyes if the bootloader is unlocked you simply either: - don't provide the features for which you require a locked bootloader - and don't do anything with the rest of the features And anyhow, I'm almost sure that this is AOSP code (with a quick search I didn't manage to find it). And, I don't know any carriers that require a locked bootloader outside of the US, and Samsung already only sold models without bootloader unlocking in the US.

aeblyve 1y ago

The writing's been on the wall for custom ROMs in general for a while, so I've been starting to think about a mobile phone vendor I could actually have a decent business relationship with. I.e. use their stock ROM and be fairly happy with it. Any opinions? Samsung was a candidate for their somewhat unified ecosystem. Maybe even apple.

DobarDabar 1y ago
Check Nothing
bestouff 1y ago
Whatever floats your boat. I'll remain with the latest vendor making custom OS possible. FYI Pixels still allow flashing custom ROMs, they've just slightly inconvenienced developers.
- aeblyve 1y ago
  It's not necessarily about it being possible, but the level of support and refinement. The future I'm seeing is one in which custom ROMs still exist as hobby projects, but aren't suitable for use in "production".
  - npteljes 1y ago
    In this domain, things change so fast that I decided to just focus on my next phone, or like the following 2-3 years. The future is as bleak for the custom ROMs as is their past. They are aftermarket modifications of the phone software, entirely dependent on the manufacturers and Google, and these release new things yearly. Pixels are a good choice I think because they come with the least amount of bloat, and with Android, the connection to Google is always there anyways.
  - subscribed 1y ago
    You still don't get any better support than with Pixel though. I wish it was different. And I'll be using my Pixel 9 with GOS until its no longer supported (so several more years), and if then there are no viable Android options? Well, so be it, iOS (which i despise but Android with Google pervasive surveillance is unusable. I know, iOS is not much better but at lease is about as secure as gos).

rickdeckard 1y ago

It is really a pity, as this means Android OS is closing down. Without supported Consumer Hardware available on the market in sufficient volume, even less end-users will use an alternative OS, which will affect quality and size of the alternative OS-market and fragment the remaining users even more. This will put the future of the entire alternative-OS ecosystem firmly back into the hands of Google. If they start further restricting BL-unlock on the Pixel-series to e.g. only Google Developer Account-Holders, the whole ecosystem will finally close down.

kotaKat 1y ago
I’ve always said that it’s been “Google’s Android”, and wellp —- Welcome to Google’s Android, where the garden walls have been turned into a razorwire fence and you’re not welcome to leave. It’s really funny that Apple’s finally allowing carefully controlled access outside of their own fences and slowly adding more APIs and expansion (hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU) while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  Of course it's been Google's Android, I don't think anyone ever questioned that. The whole reason why the OS still lives as a single entity and the app-ecosystem is not completely fragmented is due to Google's governance to keep it in check. All the stuff Apple now slowly starts to allow on iOS due to EU's Digital Markets Act is still just scratching the surface of what Android already supports. > hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU They provide third party API's to use APPLE's RCS-Service. The alternative would have been to support registering alternative RCS-services as default on the OS (and then, allow the user to choose a service). > while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it Android already allows to install and configure alternative applications for RCS, in fact Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices.
  - kotaKat 1y ago
    > Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices No? They’ve switched to Google Messages, and most/all carriers have switched to Google Jibe RCS (again, Google forcing its services into operator hands), which basically forces SafetyNet attestation to use.

ptrl600 1y ago

Been compiling and running lineageos for nigh on five years now. Attention corporate tyrants: I will never give up.

aeblyve 1y ago
Seems you may have to start getting good at SMD rework soon.
- ptrl600 1y ago
  Either freedom or zip. I'd sooner bang rocks together than use a phone I can't compile the OS for. The number of required binary blobs is a foul enough insult already.
- Hackbraten 1y ago
  You can always move to a phone that runs on mainline Linux proper.
  - aeblyve 1y ago
    Not seriously, IMO.
    - Hackbraten 1y ago
      I have been daily driving one for two years.
      - aeblyve 1y ago
        Did you spend a few thousand on a purism, tolerate the woeful hot and slow character of a pinephone, or something else? Less sardonically: I am a Linux Person but couldn't imagine really using one of those things today. It would probably kneecap my whole life in subtle ways; in the US using android already does.
        1y ago

Zak 1y ago

I have to wonder what Samsung's motivation is here. Of course they probably have some bloatware they profit from, but someone who plans to unlock the bootloader just won't buy their device now. Samsung only benefits if they lose money on device sales (do they?) and make it up on "services".

worldsavior 1y ago
How many people are there that unlock their bootloader?
- Zak 1y ago
  Few, and far fewer than in the early days of Android. It's odd that a company Samsung's size would care about this.
  - worldsavior 1y ago
    No I'm talking about what you said about someone not buying their phone because of bootloader locking. Majority of the majority don't care about the bootloader, so is Samsung.
    - Zak 1y ago
      My point isn't that it will cost them sales in an amount they care about. My point is that someone at Samsung made an active choice to remove unlocking, presumably thinking that choice would bring some benefit to Samsung's business. I'm curious as to what they believe that benefit to be.
- edelhans 1y ago
  I just unlocked the bootloader on my Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 today (which was a nightmare to do btw.). Why did I unlock it? The device has nice hardware, but is stuck with Android 13 and does not get any security updates either, so flashing a custom ROM is my only chance of having an up-to-date device. Next step will be to try PostmarketOS and see how that goes

zxcvgm 1y ago

Xiaomi apparently have also stopped unlocking their bootloaders, so the "workaround" was to go to an official store and ask them perform a downgrade, and before the staff can relock the bootloader, grab the phone and run: https://x.com/kobe_koto/status/1949154478298456531 https://x.com/kobe_koto/status/1949154478298456531 Absolutely hilarious.

sunaookami 1y ago
It's still possible outside of China but you have to have a Mi account and for newer phones you have to make some forum posts or some dumb shit.
- ralferoo 1y ago
  I did that years ago when I bought a Redmi Note 4 in Shenzhen and discovered that the Chinese ROM is very locked down. I created the Mi post, but I don't remember having to make a forum post (although it does ring a slight bell). AFAIK it was just sending a DM to support on the forum / app to explain why you needed to install the Global ROM rather than the Chinese ROM (and being a foreigner was accepted as a valid reason). About a day later they unlocked the phone bootloader remotely, and then I could install any version of the Global ROM I wanted. I've bought all my subsequent ones (Note 5, Note 8, Note 11, Note 12Pro) in either HK or UK so they all came with the Global ROM, and I've not felt the need to unlock any of them, so not tried to process since. But it definitely used to be pretty easy. I suspect the reason for the weird process is legal to ensure that phones in China don't get unlocked in order to circumvent content controls.
- unaindz 1y ago
  I dont think you need to do the forum posts but you need to request unlocking every two days and pray it works. Supposedly at 00:00 chinese local time for any chances of getting permission. Took me several months of trying non continuously.
  - climb_stealth 1y ago
    So you were actually successful in the end? I've given up on it. With the time difference I had to do it at 3am or something ridiculous like that. They have effectively disabled bootloader unlocking. They can kindly fuck off. Compared to my previous Xiaomi, which required an account of a certain age and active phone use. But after that the unlocking just worked.

nunez 1y ago

As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is, by far, the biggest seller of Android phones in the US. (I think Xiaomi is the biggest globally), so they are under much more pressure to clamp down on this. That said, rooting Samsung devices has been a worthless pursuit for a long time. Doing so irreversibly (via eFuse) disables KNOX, which prevents DeX and Samsung Health from working. It also trips SafetyNet, which disables a whole suite of key apps (banking apps and Apple Music don't work; not sure about Spotify). There's a Magisk module that uses well-known device IDs to work around these, but these only work temporaily. Many people have also reported issues with the camera (a popular reason for buying Samsungs in the first place), and you no longer get OTA updates. I believe you also get degraded camera performance if you flash another ROM since the device module is closed-source and relies on One UI to work. This is before considering that stock ROMs have gotten really good over the years (especially Samsung's), and many of the reasons why we had to root have mostly gone away. You can work around this by buying a Pixel for now, but I think we're a few years away from bootloader unlocking going away entirely. That said, I stll root Android devices that will only serve a single-purpose, like my BOOX eBook readers that I use Firefox on. This lets me run AFWall so that I can block network traffic for everything except Firefox (and a few other apps). However, I won't be logging into my Google account on them, and they aren't ever going to run banking apps or anything like that.

ranger207 1y ago
> It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones What makes securing rooted phones different from securing rooted PCs?
- ACCount36 1y ago
  Phones are portable, and thus more likely to suffer from a physical attack. But that's about it. It is, and always was a flimsy excuse to the strip user of control over his own device. "Secure Boot" isn't actually there to protect the device from an attacker. It's there to "protect" the device from its own user. It's used to "secure" DRM schemes and App Store revenue streams.

phkahler 1y ago

Samsung also removed my flashlight recently. The whole pull-down that contained it is gone. Not sure what they're thinking over there.

WXLCKNO 1y ago
You're gonna have to explain that one. Do you mean the new One UI update that made the notification pull down split into left and right swipes instead swipe down and then swipe down again? Because if that's what you mean, you can configure it to be the way it used to be again. Little pencil button, then panel settings and choose together instead of separate.
- phkahler 1y ago
  That was it!! How was i supposed to know to swipe down and then right? Grrr!
  - WXLCKNO 1y ago
    Glad I could help :) I think they have like a one time pop up to explain which is easy to miss.
cheeze 1y ago
... Use the edit functionality to add it back? I assure you that Samsung doesn't care to remove your... flashlight. This likely just got removed from a fat finger/phone being on in your pocket/etc.

npteljes 1y ago

I'm surprised they let it go on as long as they did.

mschuster91 1y ago

Normally, I'd go and say "vote with your wallet" - but sadly, in the tablet sphere, it's either ultra low spec Alibaba junk or it's Samsung. No Fairphone, no Pixel, nothing. Seriously Samsung, go and screw yourselves. The reason I insist on rooting in the first place is because unlike iOS which has a true full backup that you can trigger from your Mac (and restore afterwards), Android decidedly does not, and a bunch of apps don't do any kind of cloud sync.

cheeze 1y ago
Even then, Samsung lags hard in the tablet space. IMO there is kinda only one option... an iPad. It's an order of magnitude better than anything else out there. And that's coming from someone who doesn't really like Apple products. Given that your major reason for rooting is something that... Apple solves for. Maybe there is another option?
- mschuster91 1y ago
  Believe it or not I did consider going the full Apple route. The problem is, Apple doesn't offer anything in the 8 inch zone. I need a tablet that fits into my pant pockets. And on top of that, there's no way to migrate the data from a bunch of these apps from the Google walled garden to the Apple walled garden, not to mention purchased licenses.
  - bpye 1y ago
    Is an iPad Mini too big? That’s an 8.3” display.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      Interesting, thanks. The price tag is heavy on them though, the Samsung Galaxy Active Tab 5 is at less than 400€, the iPad Mini about 800€.
mrheosuper 1y ago
there are countless decent android tablet not from Samsung. Lenovo, oppo, oneplus, xiaomi.

foresto 1y ago

Sony Xperia models have been my choice since the Sony Ericsson days. Unlockable bootloader, LineageOS available, microsd card, headphone jack, good screen, decent camera, reasonably powerful SoC, water/dust resistant, and probably several other benefits that I'm forgetting at the moment. I don't know if any US carrier offers them, but last time I was shopping, models with North American radios could be bought online. My main complaints about Xperia phones: - They don't support re-locking the bootloader at all, let alone with custom keys. This could be problematic for folks who depend on mobile banking apps that require full Google Play Integrity (SafetyNet) attestation, or risky for folks who leave their phone unattended around potential adversaries. To be fair, almost all smartphones have this problem. - Their wonderful Xperia Compact line, comprising smaller versions of their flagship phones, seems to have been abandoned. Even their most recent "compact" models were bulky compared to their predecessors.

codedokode 1y ago

It is getting incredibly difficult to obtain a non-backdoored smartphone nowadays. I tried to find which phones support alternative OSes, without Google control and telemetry, but it turned out that alternative OSes (LineageOS, PostmarketOS, Graphenos) support mostly support outdated models and it makes no sense to buy them. There is also "Google Pixel", but the prices start at around $600 which is 3 times more than a reasonable price for a phone. So now I am wondering if it is possible to extract the ROM from a reasonably priced Samsung phone, remove the components I don't like and write it back.

NoGravitas 1y ago
GrapheneOS supports the newest Pixels, and only the Pixels that are still getting updates from Google. Right now the least bad option is probably a one-generation-old NOS or Open Box Pixel with GrapheneOS.
- theandrewbailey 1y ago
  I did this. I got an open box Pixel 9A at Best Buy for $450 about a month ago. I immediately installed GrapheneOS on it.

sersi 1y ago

Damn, I got a samsung instead of an asus phone because I could unlock it. Now what:s left? Really annoyed at all those companies who refuse to let me own my own phone. And before anyone asks me if I really need to unlock my phone... It's the principle of it, if I bought it, I own it and I should be able to run what I want on it. I will not buy a phone from a company that denies me that right. That said, I do use root for a few things: - AFWall+ (previously I used netguard but can't run multiple VPN on android so I couldn't have that running together with tailscale) - Neo-backup. Some messaging apps believe that keeping chat history is not important. Or they believe that it's fine that the only way to transfer chat history is to upload it to Google cloud without encrypting it. I hate losing my chat history and I do not want it uploaded somewhere without encrypting it so I need a backup solution. Enters neobackup - Sometimes, it is useful to be able to spoof one's GPS without the app being the wiser from a privacy perspective. - A very stupid banking app I have prevent screenshots but then doesn't allow me to download a proof of transfer. So I use root to remove the restriction against screenshots

t0bia_s 1y ago

Will this stop you from purchasing a new Samsung device? Yes. I was buying Samsung devices for years because of size (A5, A7, S10e) and ability to unlock bootloader for Lineage OS. Time to look elsewhere.

metadat 1y ago
Yep, if Samsung phones are now just as closed as Apple, well.. Android phones certainly aren't superior in many dimensions. Bummer.

Jotalea 1y ago

I never had the chance to root any Android device (unknown models, locked bootloaders, no benefit on rooting, or simply bad hardware), guess I'll never have it again.