And even when it comes to Galaxies, you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that, you guessed right, has a locked bootloader. (Two phones now, never again).
People tried many ways to get around it, back when I was still using an US variant Samsung Note 9, people went as far as using a leaked engineering/preproduction ROM, which can be flashed using Samsung’s official tool because it does have the correct key for the locked bootloader to accept, being built and compiled by Samsung, and because it’s an engineering ROM it would give you root and everything despite of the bootloader still being locked.
But it was an exceptionally rare leak, and it was only meant for preproduction for a reason, it is very VERY unstable and not exactly usable for a daily driver lol
So happy I am leaving all that BS from Samsung behind with my current Sony Xperia 1 VI which is bootloader-unlocked and rooted and deeply modded and truly my own device lol
Exactly, which makes the “you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that” invalid, since its locked bootloader whether or not you get it from a carrier
And even when it comes to Galaxies, you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that, you guessed right, has a locked bootloader. (Two phones now, never again).
Even the non-carrier variants in the US, misleadingly called “International variants” despite of being regional to the US, have locked bootloader.
Yuck, TIL.
Yuck indeed.
People tried many ways to get around it, back when I was still using an US variant Samsung Note 9, people went as far as using a leaked engineering/preproduction ROM, which can be flashed using Samsung’s official tool because it does have the correct key for the locked bootloader to accept, being built and compiled by Samsung, and because it’s an engineering ROM it would give you root and everything despite of the bootloader still being locked.
But it was an exceptionally rare leak, and it was only meant for preproduction for a reason, it is very VERY unstable and not exactly usable for a daily driver lol
So happy I am leaving all that BS from Samsung behind with my current Sony Xperia 1 VI which is bootloader-unlocked and rooted and deeply modded and truly my own device lol
I bought unlocked (no carrier) phones from samsung’s website and got locked bootloaders. I’m in the US.
that probably only means that its carrier unlocked, so that you are not forced to use a specific carrier that someone decided for you.
Exactly, which makes the “you can’t buy from a carrier in the US or you’ll often get a special version that” invalid, since its locked bootloader whether or not you get it from a carrier