Comment by altairprime

9 days ago

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

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.

  • 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

    • 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...

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