[zozbot234]

According to the github issue it seems to be a simple checksum step, not a true signature verification? If so there is no locked bootloader in any real sense.

If the real impediment is lack of demand or low-level development effort for any given device, that's in principle a solvable issue once projects like pmOS and Mobian choose to focus on some reasonably-available hackable hardware and bring it up to true daily driver state.

[enthdegree]

mtkclient does not seem to correctly interpret the usb output of the device past some part of the early boot process. Really, any of those messages formatted by mtkclient are unfaithful to the intended meaning. So yes maybe it is "just a checksum step" or maybe something else entirely. Last year I collected some UART logs on the device during bootup in a zip here:

https://github.com/bkerler/mtkclient/issues/1289