TL;DR
- ASUS has apparently withdrawn the ability to unlock the bootloader on its phones.
- As per the company’s technical support team, Zenfone 10 and Zenfone 9 users
Considering their crappy major release and security update support, rooting and flashing custom images is basically a requirement.
Well there goes any compelling reason to buy their phones lol
I was genuinely thinking about going with an ASUS phone next because of the unlockable bootloader, this really sucks to see.
There are plenty of makers doing unlockable bootloaders. Honestly, just avoid Samsung.
My EU S9+ (Exynos chip) is running a custom Android 13 rom without flaws. A lot of Samsung phones can be unlocked. Seems US models (Snapdragon) are the ones that can’t be unlocked, few exceptions. Most other countries have the Exynos chipset and are perfectly unlockable.
Yeah no reasons besides only tiny stuff like being only flagship under 6", better speakers than samsung, better cooling and less throttling than samsung, headphone jack, near stock android. More like there are no compelling reasons to root anymore, enjoy your 1k samsung throttling tho
2 years of updates means you’ll quickly end up with a phone that’s waiting to be hacked
They offer 4 years of security updates, what are you on about? It’s even better than sony
This is such an anti-consumer move, by refusing to unlock the bootloader Asus hinders the ability of users to extend their devices’ life beyond Asus’s original support window by flashing alternative ROMs…
I’d like to see right to repair laws expanded to right to unlock. I think you could make a reasonable argument that a working device that’s not receiving security updates is just as broken as a device that’s experienced a hardware failure.
As much as I agree, I don’t think our legislators are knowledgable enough to be able to handle the issue, and majority of the users don’t care enough to push for something like this. This isn’t like USB-C vs Lightning where users are sick of buying cables and chargers, so the issue is much more visible.
I’m surprised they would make an unpopular move like this.
Because it’s only unpopular to a niche audience. Granted, those buying a Zenfone are niche, but still. They stand to make more by locking the phones down for Samsung-level bullshit than they do from the customers they’ll lose here.
I feel eventually every company would do the same.
I think it more likely we’ll get to the point where getting a key to unlock the bootloader requires some kind of bullshit businesses license, or else is only possible on higher end phones. Kind of like how Windows is increasingly walling options off from everyone except Enterprise users.
Or the end result of this eSIM shit comes to pass: unlocking the bootloader breaks the SIM and/or the carrier refuses to let it on the network.
But do carriers really have a horse in this race? SIMs are separately secured so all they care about is having as many in use as possible. Whatever game of cat and mouse manufacturers choose to play with the users is their business.
I don’t think carriers will want the headache that comes with SIMs checking if they’re used on so-and-so devices, especially if it involves depending on a service they don’t control (like Google).
