from Hacker News

Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame

by aarroyoc on 10/28/24, 12:08 PM with 15 comments

• by Aachen on 10/28/24, 12:55 PM

  Wow, this is looking dark. I thought bad vendors were the exception and you can expect to unlock any device (except Apple) and run your own software unless it's something like Huawei (who aren't allowed to ship a normal Android anymore in the first place, not that that's related afaict but they changed policy around the same time)

  I use root for various things, including

  - making a backup of my data over WiFi without having to work with GUI export buttons for each app piecemeal and get only a fraction of the data

  - having most Debian packages run out of the box by using an app called Linux Deploy, for example things like qalc, yt-dlp, ffmpeg, python, etc. I can (and regularly do) run without having to look for if someone maybe made an android version for it or if it's included in termux packages. Nearly anything I have on my laptop works on my phone, only wavemon broke around android 9 due to selinux iirc (the update rate and detail level of the Android API-provided information is abysmal)

  - being able to see what apps store on my device, like years and years of queued reports from SwiftKey which it couldn't send because I don't let my keyboard have network access were t funny to see

  - denying network access to apps using iptables (AFwall, specifically). A fake VPN like trackercontrol is great but I don't trust it to limit system components like Google's or Samsung's stuff

  - I browse pictures on my computer using an ssh mount. Matter of clicking the bookmark in Nemo (the default file manager) and it logs in with an ssh key automatically. Probably there's other ways to do this, but having 1 way to browse files remotely across all my devices, from server to phone, makes everything easy

  - probably more I'm forgetting because it's just running in the background (I initially forgot that I had set up AFwall years ago, for example)

  The choice of device is already very limited when you don't want to pay extortionary rates for extra storage and be able to charge and use earphones at the same time, as I do daily. If I now also need to avoid 9 out of 10 vendors for actually being able to control my own device... What's the point still, it really isn't more than a portable camera with a thin client for Netflix and Signal at that point

• by Eavolution on 10/28/24, 3:04 PM

  What I really want from a phone seems impossible to get now. I want a phone I can run all my essential apps (whatsapp, firefox, all banks, obsidian), which will run open source, degoogled android (lineage or graphene), that's cheap, has a headphone jack, and a fingerprint scanner. This seems impossible. My current phone is ideal other than the bank apps will not run if I flash lineage to it or even unlock my bootloader, which is an issue since if I don't have them I essentially can't live in modern society due to 3ds.

  The likely solution is an old phone with everything stock just for the banks, and this phone with everything else. That's not ideal either if I want to check my balance when I'm out, or travelling, and don't have the 2nd phone. Maybe someone will make a tiny android for €30 or so with the lowest possible specs for this use case. It could be sold as a device for putting banks and 2fa apps on.

• by raxxorraxor on 10/28/24, 12:36 PM

  It really is a shame. Sure, the vast majority use phones as a consumer product. Maybe they are happy with that but for any engineer it really is wasted potential. The tool could be so much more if we just had sensible operating systems and open hardware interfaces.

  All these manufacturers are also not reliable for notebooks either. Microsoft belongs in the offender list with trying to enforce secure boot and similar mechanisms we still only have to endure on phones as of today.

• by snvzz on 10/28/24, 12:33 PM

  So many devices with non-unlockable bootloader.

  It highlights a major legislative failure.