Xiaomi will reportedly end its global bootloader unlock program

The official process was a pain anyway, as it required sending personal identification data to China. Anyone that wants a custom ROM on their phone should be looking elsewhere, although I don't know of any brand that makes that process easy anymore

Well, Pixel still unlocks freely.
- Assuming you dont get the phone through your carrier
- can we use Google Wallet to tap pay with an unlocked bootloader?
Pixel devices are trivially easy to unlock
Pixel or OnePlus
- OnePlus phones have green lines on screen and damaging motherboard issues.
Permanently Deleted
Agreed, the official process was a massive pain and borderline non functional.
My Fairphone 5 was easy to unlock.
So far I couldn't unlock the bootloader because whenever I add a number it tells me to try again tomorrow

They have already practically ended it. The official process makes the user jump through so many hoops - registering account, using it for 30 days (!!!), installing their app, begging for unlock through it, getting random errors which the official support refuses to explain (!!!) and only after that having the chance to try to hit the daily unlock request window which lasts less than one minute each day (!!!) - that it is practically non existent. Fuck the fucking fuckers.

having the chance to try to hit the daily unlock request window which lasts less than one minute each day (!!!)

Holy shit, are you serious? Can you elaborate on how does that work? You get an email saying you can do that between 3:27:15 PM and 3:27:50 PM or something?
- No, it's the same minute every day, for everyone in the world. 0:00 GMT+8
Return it
- Unfortunately not easy in my country - only for repeated warranty claims.

The source on this is one guy from X (formerly Twitter), from Vietnam.

I mean, it sound plausible and expected, but it's not some official news.

Cool.
My country has limited choice in phone OEMs. Soon the only unlockable choice will be Motorola.
And when they too stop allowing it, I guess I can go fuck myself🖕

The hell is the point of putting more powerful silicon in the damn things if they'll just keep restricting what you can do with them more and more each year?

I fucking hate tech companies, man.

Member back when you used to be optimistic about the upcoming innovation? Now the only "innovation" is enshitification.
The point of more power technology is to easily control their users more. The days of having "open" phones died with Nexus
- I'm fragmenting my devices more and more.
  
  I recently bought a cheap mp3 player, quit streaming, found new piracy routes for music, back to basics. Still use Spotify for browsing and finding new bands. All good.
  
  I use a kindle and read ebooks a lot.
  
  At the rate phones are going, I'll have a digital camera and a dumb phone soon.
Exactly

If that's true, the temperature in the frog's pan goes up a little more... soon, we will lose all freedom in the mobile world :(

Perhaps for the best, the sooner we stop using those pieces of shit, the sooner we'll regain a bit of control of our own lives

ASUS did this recently & lost a lawsuit in the UK for lying to customers to say unlock servers were only temporarily down for a couple months (lol)

Glad I didn't buy a zenfone, looked like a great option but that sucks
- I had it in my cart & went to double-check nothing changed about unlocking… happy I took a step back
Interesting. I hadn't heard about this. I got this response from Xiaomi earlier today after complaining they mis-sold me a phone as their unique selling point was the ability to unlock the bootloader.

"We hope you could understand, that such an operation will disable some of the built-in security features of the system, and those security features are part of what keeps the operating system safe and your data secure from exposure or corruption. And this misuse will void your phone's warranty and it may render your phone useless depending on the security measures in place on your phone."

The real goal that the community should be working on is to strengthen the political efforts to give people the rights to do whatever they want with phones they PURCHASE, and prohibit manufacturers from locking them down so the OWNER can’t make any changes. I would totally accept that it voids the warranty because they can’t cover all the bricked devices that result from reckless modding… but there should not be allowed any barriers between the OWNER and the software within.

And the reason for my emphasis of certain words is that the corporate world is really truly beginning to indulge the delusion that nobody ever owns anything and that purchases consumers make are merely the manufacturer granting them the privilege of indefinite loan. It all needs to stop hard and now.

Xiaomi was the only manufacturer I recently kept buying my "new flagship every 3 years". If it is not possible to unlock, I'm out. I guess a Pixel will be my choice. The only thing keeping me away from Pixel were the low performance CPUs.

Pixel cpu is embarrassing though. Very low performance, and they somehow manage to convince the press it's fine by saying it's AI optimized. Wtf..
- To 99% of people, battery life matters much more than it being 8% faster compared to last year's model. Though it can be argued that the pixel's efficiency sucks and that it affects the battery life significantly. For example on my phone I would gladly use the low power mode that reduces the cpu perf to about 70%, except it also forces the display to go to 60hz
The performance may not be on par with other Flagships Socs. But, it can be considered a decent upper midrange flagship smartphone. The pixel phones after Pixel 8 are decent and do not have the bad heating issues of the past Pixel generations.

What a shame. I don't get why they would do that. Didn't I pay for the phone?

That's the problem. You paid only once. The companies want you to pay indefinitely. And if they control your OS, well, they can shove ads or broatware into your face all they wish gaining more revenue.
- Not to mention both phones and TVs are crazy expensive to manufacturer. They can't effectively sell a device at a reasonable price so they make it cheaper and make up for it elsewhere
- Okay. I'm not buying it then
There is money to be had

Another words they want to harvest your data

Anyway I am still rocking a 2019 phone with Lineage OS and it works pretty well. Used phones are where its at these days. Hold on to your working device until it dies.

Still got my phone from 2020, I really like the phone but the software is creaking, even the custom ROM I moved to is now discontinued and no Lineage available.

I looked at porting something myself but it is ... not trivial to say the least.

Just feels frustrating that the phone still works fine but is gradually losing functionality and I can't update it. Also ngl I really miss having contactless payments. I've tried all the fixes I can find online with no success.

I feel like I'm limited to pixel phones since they're the only widely available phone that doesn't void the warranty for unlocking the bootloader. I haven't tried roms in a few years but I like having that choice. Fairphones can be a little hard to get. Are there other options? Lineage support would be ideal.

I've been using Pixels for a while and I've been perfectly happy.

Well, except for my 6 having a green tint to the screen, but that was fixed in a software update a while back.
- I don't have any complaints with the 6 either other than the fingerprint reader being a downgrade compared to older models. I don't plan to upgrade until the 10/10a with a TSMC tensor and hopefully major improvements in performance and efficiency. Would be nice to have more choices without sacrificing this admittedly obscure principle.
There is also Shiftphone. The 8 model is supposed to come out in january 25. They explicitly support custom roms.
- If they stick with a Samsung manufactured 750G, it'll be limited to the low end market. There's nothing wrong with that but it's not really an option for the western mid to high end market.

It was a matter of time. We really need a good(or at least better) company to step up and make a phone. A framework phone would be fire but its gonna take years if they wanna fo it.

Motorola is pretty good or at least my current older device is solid
- Sony still welcomes unlocking without anything special—you get a headphone jack & microSD too.

My current phone is an F5. One of my worst Android experiences has been this phone before I put a different ROM. Never would buy another one without being able to unlock the bootloader.

i miss the early 2010s

Bought a Pocophone F1 when that had insane value per dollar. Had to "wait" for a cooldown period to unlock the bootloader. I had never bought phones made for a Chinese market before. I have never felt more disrespected by a phone company, forcing me to use their launcher for 2 weeks, so condescending. I am a functioning human adult, thank you very much, I'll chose my own software. Never interested in made for Chinese market phones again.

Sad to hear

Xiaomi can suck my balls, the very first automatic updates they force on a new phone is the stuff that sticks advertise EVERY. FUCKING. WHERE. Gallery? Have some ads. Settings? Get yo ads! Calculator? ADS ADS ADS! I can't tell whether they're on par or worse than Samsung with stupid bloat, data harvesting and ads everywhere. The fucking phones are also infuriatingly condescending, treating you like a dumb toddler, showing warnings about "daaaaangeroooooooous" actions you might be doing and putting 30s timers before you can hit "LET ME FUCKING CONTINUE"

Unlocking the bootloader is such a hassle, too, I gave up and used ADB Bridge to uninstall some of the bloatware to make my experience less insufferable.

So that's why unlocking the bootloader on my dad's phone doesn't work. This really sucks, I hope there's some other way to do it because HyperOS is straight ass.

You could look for a hardware vulnerability. I doubt they would be so careless but you never know.
- Based on how much HyperOS (and the fucking name) sucks, I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a way to unlock the bootloader. I really hope someone does soon because I really don't want my dad to continue getting tortured by having to use it.

I've decided a long time ago I won't buy Xiaomi phone again unless it's my only choice... if that's true then it's no more a choice Anybody knows what are OnePlus and Oppo polices with unlocking bootloader ?

sad as fuck if true. i really liked xiaomi.

When I was trying to unlock the bootloader, Mi flash tool told me there's an update (v7.?) and gave me the link to download the newer version, when I tried to download it every browser I used gave an error in the website even with VPN Now reading this news , even if it's still unofficial.... I was wondering if Xiaomi retracted the update because it's actually preparing to close the program

Is this a good news or a bad news?

Bad news. Because you wouldn't be able to flash custom ROMs or do other modifications to your device.

If you are not familiar with rooting and custom ROMs. It should not matter to you.
- Damn I thought we would have more easier unofficial methods to unlock bootloader.
  
  This is horrible because Xiaomi devices have a great scene in custom ROM community.

Same for PoCo ? It seems the PoCo F3 is one of the phone with the most custom ROM development on XDA, very popular.

List one good ROM. I am on F3, there is literally zero interesting ROMs
- no clue, I am on HyperOS. But there is all the popular one like Lineage or Pixel