[Zak]

I have to wonder what Samsung's motivation is here. Of course they probably have some bloatware they profit from, but someone who plans to unlock the bootloader just won't buy their device now. Samsung only benefits if they lose money on device sales (do they?) and make it up on "services".

[kotaKat]

I’ve got five bucks on this being a new requirement from Google to Tier 1 OEMs to eliminate bootloader locking.

[Zak]

Google's own Pixel devices have easy unlocking, so this would surprise me. Google's strategy to keep devices users actually control from being too mainstream is remote attestation.

[unyttigfjelltol]

Samsung botched UI 7.0.[1] Their approach to UI 8.0 is more of the same. Removing features is one thing, this is something worse.

[1] https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S22/One-UI-7-0-Up...

[internetter]

I'm guessing this is your post? Way too anacdoal to make generalizations to OneUI 7.0 as a whole (and, expecting the demands to work in a community forum is funny, and, was the prompt "hey chatGPT, write a frustrated forum post?")

[unyttigfjelltol]

No. I could have picked dozens of other posts.

[worldsavior]

How many people are there that unlock their bootloader?

[edelhans]

I just unlocked the bootloader on my Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 today (which was a nightmare to do btw.). Why did I unlock it? The device has nice hardware, but is stuck with Android 13 and does not get any security updates either, so flashing a custom ROM is my only chance of having an up-to-date device.

Next step will be to try PostmarketOS and see how that goes

[Zak]

Few, and far fewer than in the early days of Android. It's odd that a company Samsung's size would care about this.

[worldsavior]

No I'm talking about what you said about someone not buying their phone because of bootloader locking. Majority of the majority don't care about the bootloader, so is Samsung.

[Zak]

My point isn't that it will cost them sales in an amount they care about.

My point is that someone at Samsung made an active choice to remove unlocking, presumably thinking that choice would bring some benefit to Samsung's business. I'm curious as to what they believe that benefit to be.