Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame

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

by thunderbong • 8 months ago

176 89 8 months ago

github.com

Lord-Jobo• 8 months ago

Insane how bad this has gotten. So few options left to truly own your smartphone

Kim_Bruning• 8 months ago

Room for new competitors!

pixl97• 8 months ago

"The market will fix itself!"

Narrator: "In fact the market did not fix itself"

preisschild3• 8 months ago

GrapheneOS is working with an OEM that wants to support this (+ the added security requirements for GOS)

charcircuit4• 8 months ago

Being able to install a new os is orthogonal to owning a device. It's an additional feature that most users won't use.

woodrowbarlow• 8 months ago

the "ownership" framing is because bootloader locks allow vendors to unilaterally make decisions about how your device operates after you purchase the device.

goku1211• 8 months ago

Being able to install a new OS is not an 'additional feature'. It's the downgrade of a capability that's inherent to the device. It's the same as making a carseat heating a subscriptions service. Whether the users use it or not is entirely irrelevant.

nkrisc2• 8 months ago

When my mother was shopping for a new smartphone she definitely was not considering whether or not she could install a different OS on it.

lawlessone• 8 months ago

cool, When i was shopping for a new car i wasn't considering if it was a 4x4 because i live in a city with a mild climate

goku1211• 8 months ago

Your mother's unwillingness to install a different OS doesn't mean that everyone else who wants it should be denied too.

I'm genuinely curious. What's your motivation in making up such a pointless argument/justification?

goku1211• 8 months ago

We really need to make this into a website for 'hostile smartphones' or a 'list of smartphones to avoid', and popularize it among the normal folks. This is relevant to them even if they don't unlock the phones themselves. They could pay someone to unlock it and upgrade it - but only if the phone can be unlocked.

The manufacturers will do something about it when their hostile behaviour starts to affect their bottom line. They have been ripping us off for far too long.

jajuuka2• 8 months ago

I think this is living in fantasy land. Normal people aren't hyper concerned about boot loaders, sideloading or custom ROM's. There was an uptick many years past simply because this offered new functionality, but anymore there really isn't any reason to outside of small things like removing the Google Search bar from the home screen. But the amount of effort versus the result does not balance out.

Normal people just want to buy a phone and use it and they can do that today. They don't want the added complications. There is a reason Amazon is so popular and massive. The goal should be to add simplicity and not add complexity if want something to be popular.

walterbell2• 8 months ago

Only two options (Google Pixel and Nothing Phone) for relocking Android with custom keys? https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot/issues/299

kachapopopow2• 8 months ago

unfortunately you lose access to pretty much ever banking app :/

unnervingduck• 8 months ago

The experience varies by country, here in Finland I haven't had a single banking app complain about an unlocked bootloader or a custom OS.

pxeboot4• 8 months ago

I use GraphaneOS and have had zero issues with the ~10 bank/brokerage apps I use.

Pfhortune• 8 months ago

This is a popular thing to say, but is an oversimplification...

Call it anec-data but all my banking apps work in GrapheneOS, and I have several installed. There is one that reduces functionality if SafetyNet fails (have to do the 2fa flow every time I restart the app, can't set as a trusted device and notifications don't work) but it still works to access my account.

That said... I haven't tried to use NFC payments and do carry around a secondary iPhone 15 as my "business phone" these days that pretty much just has payment/banking apps on it, just in case one bank or another decides to suddenly nuke their app on my main phone...

jamesbelchamber• 8 months ago

I haven't come across a banking app in the UK that doesn't work with GrapheneOS. HSBC insists you use the AOSP or Google keyboards but otherwise no issues.

Youden3• 8 months ago

Not necessarily, I have quite a few that work.

It's crowdsourced and therefore incomplete but https://plexus.techlore.tech/ has reports of compatability with the complete absence of Google Services or a replacement like MicroG.

Here in Switzerland my experience is that the big banks like UBS and the cantonal banks tend to work, while the smaller things like McDonald's and my credit card providers tend to break because they have nonsense Play Integrity requirements.

crapple8430• 8 months ago

There are different levels of anti-user checks. Some only detect unlocked bootloader and/or root. Others use the play integrity anti-feature provided by Google. GrapheneOS tells you when apps request play integrity checks, and you'll see that a lot of apps do these requests constantly, even if they don't actually block you for using an unlocked or non-vendor system (custom key but otherwise locked and not rooted like GOS).

We really need a more foolproof technical solution for this if general purpose computing on the mobile phone is to be preserved. Perhaps some type of a remote control scheme to operate on a "slave" device. Failing that, if I do need one of such apps needing "strong" integrity, I'd probably look into getting an iPhone for those.

ThePowerOfFuet3• 8 months ago

Every banking app works perfectly for me on GrapheneOS.

codedokode2• 8 months ago

Good riddance, no more spying, no more ads in notifications (in my country you can use banks via browser. Also, instant transfers by phone number are free).

Grisu_FTP• 8 months ago

I ran root on my main devices for 8-9 years uninterrupted and always got banking apps (and all others for that matter) to work with at most 40 minutes of tinkering. Ofc thats not something everybody wants todo, but since i love tinkering with tech anyway and always want root that was worth it for me (and OS updates for 7 years instead of 2, used my phone that normally only was supported up to Android 9 to android 15). And this is with samsung devices which have tripped Knox (Funnily enough, i wanted to unroot since i didnt need it anymore once and then my samsung smartwatch couldnt connect because my device had tripped knox, so i had to root again to hide it. So their anti-root measure pretty much forced me to stay rooted)

The hardest to get working were: S-push tan (a 2fa app for the bank "Sparkasse", their normal app is far easier to get running) and lately revolut. but as i said, i always got it working.

Also it seems whatsapp blocks open bootloaders if you get enough warnings for using a custom modded version (A message pops up that tells you to get whatsapp from the official places, which i did) but hiding the open bootloader was enough to get that working.

Also with just root its easier than with root + Custom Rom, which was my setup.

So yea, it wont work out of the box, but its pretty simple to get working.

t0bia_s• 8 months ago

Not true. Crypto wallets works just fine.

dataflow2• 8 months ago

As a rule, almost all carrier locked devices do not allow the bootloader to be unlocked. This usually makes sense, as it would allow you to completely bypass the contract.

I don't understand how this works, why/how are a carrier lock and a device lock related? Shouldn't one be a lock on the baseband chip and the other on the main firmware?

nar001• 8 months ago

I wonder if it might be about things like tethering, I remember for a while US carriers (AT&T I think?) used to lock it under a specific plan, but unlocking the bootloader/rooting let you bypass this limit

indrora• 8 months ago

On a lot of prepaid devices such as those from Kyocera for companies like Boost, the limitations are almost all in software configuration, because that's cheap and easy to do rather than rolling your own baseband configuration.

For years, carrier lock on iOS devices was simply a software switch. In a lot of devices, still, if you have an unlocked boot loader you can run patched baseband firmware that doesn't care that it hasn't been told the magic numbers to unlock itself.

kotaKat• 8 months ago

If you can unlock the bootloader you can generally also reflash the firmware at will on the baseband, so you can replace it or modify it to remove any subsidy/carrier locking on the baseband side.

Unlocking the bootloader will also of course let you eliminate the carrier’s bloatware that they get paid to install and load onto it, including the things that they shoved all the way into the Android “non-disableable” list.

Tracfone called this “cellphone trafficking” all the way since the 90s when people would buy their loss leaders, flash ‘em, and flip ‘em to third world markets for top dollar.

https://stopcellphonetrafficking.com/

Y_Y• 8 months ago

They don’t deal in guns or drugs. Instead, they deal in prepaid, unlocked cell phones for use on networks for which the phones were not intended.

Comedy gold. This is up there with "you wouldn't download a car", or "insurance fraud increases your premiums" in the hall of fame for "this isn't even a crime, but it makes the company sad so it's the consumer's responsibility to police".

throwaway484762• 8 months ago

The carrier gives you a subsidized price on the phone and then you pay for it as part of the service bill. If you can unlock it you could switch to a cheaper carrier. None of this should be allowed of course. Phones should always be unlockable.

dataflow2• 8 months ago

I know this. It doesn't answer my question at all.

clot273• 8 months ago

fuck iqoo

pomtato• 8 months ago

Amen to that. Wish I knew better before I got mine.

preisschild3• 8 months ago

Wall of Fame (allows re-locking the bootloader with custom key): https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot/issues/299

silvestreh• 8 months ago

Apparently the average consumer couldn’t care less, given that Apple and Samsung are among the worst options for unlocking, and still the best-selling ones.

torben-friis2• 8 months ago

Wait, the xiaomi one is weird.

You have to pass an actual, 'notoriously difficult' test?

What are they testing?

ytch2• 8 months ago

https://github.com/MlgmXyysd/Xiaomi-BootLoader-Questionnaire

here are some past papers. For example:

https://github.com/MlgmXyysd/Xiaomi-BootLoader-Questionnaire...

  Regarding the Service in Android's four major components, please do not select the correct statements from the following [Multiple Choice Question]

    1. Service must perform time-consuming operations in the main thread, otherwise it may cause stuttering

    2. Among Android's four major components, Service runs in the background and definitely will not block the main thread  

    3. Service's lifecycle does not depend on the Activity that starts the Service

    4. A Service can only be started once; multiple calls to the startService() method have no effect
    
    5. Service can use the stopSelf() method to stop the service

Since 1,2,3,4 are wrong, but the problem asks "do not select the correct statements", you need to choose 1,2,3,4.

It show not only how hard the problem, but they also play on words. You also need to answer 13 questions in 15 minutes. And scoring more than 85 points to have a chance to unlock it.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1jPbXzaE9d/

Because the exam difficulty is too high, some people even go to official repair centers requesting a downgrade, and snatch the phone when the technicians unlock and reflash the firmware.

UPDATE: fix the score requirement and the correct answer.

torben-friis2• 8 months ago

Wow, that’s certification level with extra traps on top.

Because the exam difficulty is too high, some people even go to official repair centers requesting a downgrade, and snatch the phone when the technicians unlock and reflash the firmware.

Are people that interested in unlocking despite the high friction? Honestly, I’m impressed.

clhodapp• 8 months ago

Subject to the accuracy of the translation, you are guaranteed to answer that one correctly by not selecting any options. That is because the instructions do not constrain what you may do about incorrect statements. Thus, in a purely logical sense, you must not select any correct statements but you may select or not select incorrect statements.

M95D• 8 months ago

Why is everyone so focused on unlocking the bootloader instead of replacing the bootloader.

tvshtr• 8 months ago

ASUS needs a special mention. They removed unlock option and closed their servers after they sold phones with such capability to customers.

Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame

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