I looked at all the screen defect reports and high price and decided not to risk it.
> Samsung says[1] there shouldn't be a problem with locking/unlocking the bootloader.
> And other sites[2] confirm this for newer Samsung phones.
More specifically, Samsung phones for the US with qualcomm chips cannot be unlocked. The nice little menu option in that article is just not there.
> What's more, there's additional development work[3] on bypassing Safety Net as well.
If they decide to remove the fallback, that method dies.
> I don't even own a Samsung phone and I found all this out in less than five minutes.
The info on samsung models is a mess because they put out almost identical phones with different chipsets and subtly different capabilities.
All the non-US models, almost all with exynos chips, can be unlocked but that does me no good.
> you didn't mention the specific Samsung model you have which may complicate things
S20 FE 5G SM-G781U1 if you really want to know.
> Besides, even if you don't root the device, installing a custom recovery partition will allow nandroid backups[5], which are clearly superior to other backup mechanisms.
>I looked at all the screen defect reports and high price and decided not to risk it.
That concerned me a bit too. I got a deal ($499 IIRC) on the device and decided to risk it.
I've had no screen issues at all and like it a lot. Then again, I've only had it for four months, so I guess we'll see.
>More specifically, Samsung phones for the US with qualcomm chips cannot be unlocked. The nice little menu option in that article is just not there.
You are, of course, absolutely correct. I didn't catch that in my initial search.
That sucks. I'm glad I didn't purchase a Samsung.
I had similar goals as you did in a new device: fast processor, lots of RAM, large internal storage and large SDCard support, long battery life.
I considered another HTC device, but my experience with them dropping support almost immediately (~9 months after I bought it) for upgrades really pissed me off.
And since I'm not going to buy a new phone every year or two (there's no reason to replace a perfectly good phone just because the OEM drops support in an attempt to get you to buy a new one), especially when there are better Android implementations (e.g., LineageOS) without all the bloatware.
As such, rootable/bootloader unlockable was very important to me too.
Maybe I'm just old and crotchety, but I figure that if I purchase a physical product, I should be able to do with it as I choose, without restriction. This whole 'we decide what you can and can't do, and what software you can and can't run with the very expensive device you've "purchased"' schtick is unacceptable to me.
This is yet another area where we need legislation to address this in the US.
I am aware that there are specific FCC regulations that require specific ranges of transceiver power levels and related stuff, but since the baseband processor code is generally proprietary and requires binary blobs from the manufacturer, that really shouldn't be an issue.
Perhaps if we make enough noise, we can make that a reality.
I looked at all the screen defect reports and high price and decided not to risk it.
> Samsung says[1] there shouldn't be a problem with locking/unlocking the bootloader.
> And other sites[2] confirm this for newer Samsung phones.
More specifically, Samsung phones for the US with qualcomm chips cannot be unlocked. The nice little menu option in that article is just not there.
> What's more, there's additional development work[3] on bypassing Safety Net as well.
If they decide to remove the fallback, that method dies.
> I don't even own a Samsung phone and I found all this out in less than five minutes.
The info on samsung models is a mess because they put out almost identical phones with different chipsets and subtly different capabilities.
All the non-US models, almost all with exynos chips, can be unlocked but that does me no good.
> you didn't mention the specific Samsung model you have which may complicate things
S20 FE 5G SM-G781U1 if you really want to know.
> Besides, even if you don't root the device, installing a custom recovery partition will allow nandroid backups[5], which are clearly superior to other backup mechanisms.
I know, and I wish I could do that.