Comment by Abishek_Muthian
5 years ago
I always felt manufacturers should be forced to open the boot-loader of their obsolete devices if not for consumer rights at-least "for the environment". Motorola offering unlock codes on their website albeit voiding warranty felt like a breath of fresh air[1].
PinePhone, other open smartphones are not available in my country due to embargo; So Moto G4 Play was the obvious second choice[2] for PostmarketOS due to availability of robust mainline kernel(MSM8916).
But guess what, Motorola removed unlocking support for older devices from their portal[3]! So even though G4 Play is available widely in the used market it's useless for any aftermarket OS efforts. There's absolutely no explanation for this decision from Motorola, other than making people buy their latest devices. So, it seems that the devices unlocked(hacked) by the community is still a better choice in the long run just because the manufacturers cannot be trusted for the devices 'we own?'.
[1]https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/standalone/b...
[2]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11rieZf6ODM-HQkEpFYWX...
I wonder if the right to repair laws that are gaining momentum might help fix this.
The forced open bootloader proposal is the only right to repair law that makes any sense.
Samsung has had bootloader unlocking as a feature in all their mobile devices for a very long time. It is available for all devices, new or old.
> Samsung has had bootloader unlocking as a feature in all their mobile devices
This is simply not true. Some of their devices provide that but many don't. Research carefully before purchasing.
I just realized that the US carrier locked devices don't have it. So, if you have one of those, unfortunately, you'll have to use a third-party method.
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Didn't 'Knox' mess that up for newer phones? Anyways, couple of Samsung A/J series phones does seem to work well with PostmarketOS but unfortunately display brightness cannot be adjusted making it a hard choice.
You'll void your warranty and never be able to use Knox again if you switch back to Samsung firmware once you unlock bootloader. But no, Knox doesn't prevent you from unlocking bootloader in any way.