All Snapdragon variants of Samsung's Galaxy lineup are locked, regardless of carrier. This has been going on at least since the S7, and there are exploits to unlock bootloaders for such phones, at least as far as the Note 9 [1]. I would argue that if you need an exploit to unlock the bootloader, you are no better off than purchasing Apple.
It's still a far fry from "no better," in my view. There's an ecosystem of Android software for these environments. For instance, LineageOS, as the typical first target, was unofficially ported to the Note 9 Snapdragon soon after the bootloader exploit. There are also existing tools for Google Apps, microG, Xposed, etc.
All Snapdragon variants of Samsung's Galaxy lineup are locked, regardless of carrier. This has been going on at least since the S7, and there are exploits to unlock bootloaders for such phones, at least as far as the Note 9 [1]. I would argue that if you need an exploit to unlock the bootloader, you are no better off than purchasing Apple.
1: https://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-galaxy-s9-galaxy-note...
It's still a far fry from "no better," in my view. There's an ecosystem of Android software for these environments. For instance, LineageOS, as the typical first target, was unofficially ported to the Note 9 Snapdragon soon after the bootloader exploit. There are also existing tools for Google Apps, microG, Xposed, etc.
You've got fairly good jailbreaks for most iPhones, too, so in my opinion they're close.
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