Update from Asus
The service team reply misunderstood the situation. Unlock tool is unavailable at this moment but we are allowing the possibility to unlock, please stay tuned.
**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- ASUS has apparently withdrawn the ability to unlock the bootloader on its phones.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 won’t be able to root their phones.
This is sad to see. Replying from Lineage OS on Asus.
It’s funny that looking around almost every single piece of ASUS hardward I bought over the years, I chose them because I could do more with their kit than I could do with the cheaper stuff and a lot of that had to do with access to the hardware (overclockeability of things like motherboards and graphics boards, much more configurable and better hardware for routers and media players and so on).
So I’m wandering what exactly is their unique value proposition on smartphones versus brands which are much more well known and well established in the regular consumer segment if they’re ditching being the superior choice for the more technical users: what exactly is the point of “same shit as everybody else” hardware for premium prices?!
Didn’t even know they were great for it, but my motherboard has been a sexy beast for for iommu grouping
What phone should I buy that is not complete trash and I can do what I want with? My Samsung phone is almost dying and I really don’t want another Samsung, or Asus.
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I have a bunch… If you’re good with Linux and like to mess with your phone daily, you can probably daily drive it with minimal frustration. That is if you just want calls, SMS, and sort of MMS. Other apps or services are still rough around the edge.
If you just want something that works and you don’t have to mess with it, stay with android/IOS. I still use my pixel3 with grapheneOS. I like the Speakers too much to upgrade.
How usable is waydroid?
I’ve stayed away from waydroid so I can’t speak to this. Though, you can think of the phone as a Linux desktop in your pocket. Some programs/apps do not scale to a phone screen and battery life is used like a laptop so the phone can die quickly depending on what you’re running.
Waydroid is no different. Give it a try on your PC to get a general idea. Notifications, if working, will cause the phone to die quickly. Android pushes everything through their services.
Interesting. I have waydroid on my laptop and it has been pretty smooth. What’s the deal with the battery drain? On my laptop battery life is comparable between Linux and windows. Is it driver issue?
Motorola Edge g52 is quite a nice phone for low price. They allow rooting, have a jack, supports lineageOS and so on.
The end of an era. Companies also locked the bootloader back then and you’ll need to find a vulnerability to exploit in order to unlock it. When custom roms starting to become popular, companies relaxed their stance and allowing their customers to unlock the bootloader using an official channel instead of utilizing a security exploits, perhaps as a competitive advantage so power users would recommend them to their friends and family.
Now with declining popularity of rooting and custom roms, companies are starting to stop allowing their customers to unlock the bootloader again. From their perspective, allowing bootloader unlocking is nothing but trouble (support-wise) and might even cannibalize sales (why upgrade your phone every two years when you can install a custom ROM with the latest version of Android), so declining popularity of custom ROMs is a perfect excuse for them to stop allowing bootloader unlocking.
It should be illegal to restrict what people can do with their own goddamn motherfucking private property.
Once digital media got away with “actually we are just letting you borrow it and can take it away whenever we want”, hardware manufacturers have been drooling to do the same. Apple and game console manufacturers are most of the way there already.
Well it sure is a good thing they are making everything smart nowadays….
But seriously I can’t believe how fast the car industry locked previously free features behind a subscription
I agree with the sentiment, but even the claim that they were free is part of their narrative. Their cost was included in the price of the car, everyone paid for it already. They are double-dipping.
I suspect we’ll eventually need to create a standard much like th PC Clone, in which hardware, OS and software are independently produced and support compatibility standards.
Not in the current clime of unregulate capitalism, though.
I’m afraid the PC ecosystem is one-of-a-kind, and perhaps once it’s gone, we’ll never have anything like it again. Companies are obsessed with vertical integration now, owning everything from software to peripherals and accessories. The closest thing we have to PC ecosystem where multiple independent companies works to support a single platform is perhaps the raspberry pi ecosystem, but even then it’s pale in comparison to the PC ecosystem in term of variety and number of manufacturers.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Yeah, that’s the dystopia we’re
headed towardsalready arriving at, except I’m not fucking happy.
ASUS is apparently killing the posibility of me being a potential customer of their smartphones.
ASUS annihilated the possibility I’d ever buy any ASUS product after the way they handled the 7800X3D/AM5 VoC issue. I had never really noticed, but a pretty big swathe of my tech came from them (laptop, monitor, and motherboard among others) but no more.
It’s a big company. Lots of people in lots of departments doing lots of different things. Do you swear off Samsung memory or flash because of their practices around their TV’s or refrigerators?
If the refrigerant on my fridge leaked and they refused to fix it, I’d sure swear off their ACs too, yeah.
Rooting users are only a small percentage of all users so they probably won’t even notice unfortunately.
sent from rooted phone
Doesn’t matter if I ever want to root my phone or not.
It’s mine.
People who just want a vanilla experience likely all buy Samsung.
Samsung goes so hard with their proprietary apps and intrusive ads. The closest to vanilla I’ve gotten is a pixel phone.
By vanilla I mean the most basic for consumers, not debloated factory default, which is what someone who roots their phone might want. The average customer is definitely not bothering with that,
Samsung unlocked is free to root, and they even provide the tools to do so. Most models supported in the free distros as well.
Yeah, but then you break Knox, and can’t EVER fix it. The phone becomes instantly worthless for resale.
Asus gave an update saying the server is currently down but will be back up. But their response was not exactly the most reassuring that bootloader unlock will continue to be available.
The service team reply misunderstood the situation. Unlock tool is unavailable at this moment but we are allowing the possibility to unlock, please stay tuned.
Asus is really going down the drain…
Locked bootloader and only 2 years of upgrades? Is not like Zenfones are cheap either. Hard pass!
My biggest problem with unlocking the bootloader is that many apps look for an unlocked bootloader as “Its rooted” according to that app but unlocking the bootloader and being rooted is 2 different things. I only want to run a custom rom I dont want to root. But you end up having to do the whole thing and running Magisk to hide the root and unlocked bootloader.
I always root my phones and I found that installing those app on a cloning environment, like island, usually has them working fine
You usually need to go one step further and install Magisk so you can control what apps “see” about the phone.
And there I was seriously considering getting one. Greed is ruining good things again.
I don’t understand how this move is even supposed to make them more money.
My guess is they’re going to slow down the device on new android and block rooting so you can’t install your own OS, also, probably doing a lot of spying on the users.
Again? I didn’t realize the ride had stopped for a bit. .
… aaaand another brand I’ll be avoiding when looking for a new phone. In my eyes a phone that can’t be rooted is kind of like a computer without access to an administrator account - you can do stuff with it, but at one point your hands are tied.
It’s my device. I will do with it whatever the fuck I desire
This is exactly why I sent my Zenphone 9 back. Shame because it was such a good little phone and one of the few flagships with a headphone jack.
Zenfone 9 can’t be bootloader unlocked?
Nope. At least not when I bought mine only a couple of months ago, I guess right when they blocked the unlocking tool from being used. Super annoying.
Oh, fuck off. I’m not one to root my phone, but you own the damn thing. Once it’s in your hands, the maker should have no right to tell you what to do with it.
Consumers seem to be too dumb for their own good.
Regulators seem to be too captured for consumers’ good.
Yeah, I’m really tired of this.
We should be able to root and install any OS on our phones like we can do on PC.
I don’t use root or custom ROMs on my phone anymore but this is something that should always be possible.
What the lame, user already buy they product but user can’t modify it like apple did…
