They have already practically ended it. The official process makes the user jump through so many hoops - registering account, using it for 30 days (!!!), installing their app, begging for unlock through it, getting random errors which the official support refuses to explain (!!!) and only after that having the chance to try to hit the daily unlock request window which lasts less than one minute each day (!!!) - that it is practically non existent. Fuck the fucking fuckers.

Cool.
My country has limited choice in phone OEMs. Soon the only unlockable choice will be Motorola.
And when they too stop allowing it, I guess I can go fuck myself🖕

The hell is the point of putting more powerful silicon in the damn things if they'll just keep restricting what you can do with them more and more each year?

I fucking hate tech companies, man.

ASUS did this recently & lost a lawsuit in the UK for lying to customers to say unlock servers were only temporarily down for a couple months (lol)

The official process was a pain anyway, as it required sending personal identification data to China. Anyone that wants a custom ROM on their phone should be looking elsewhere, although I don't know of any brand that makes that process easy anymore

The source on this is one guy from X (formerly Twitter), from Vietnam.

I mean, it sound plausible and expected, but it's not some official news.

Another words they want to harvest your data

Anyway I am still rocking a 2019 phone with Lineage OS and it works pretty well. Used phones are where its at these days. Hold on to your working device until it dies.

If that's true, the temperature in the frog's pan goes up a little more... soon, we will lose all freedom in the mobile world :(

What a shame. I don't get why they would do that. Didn't I pay for the phone?

Xiaomi can suck my balls, the very first automatic updates they force on a new phone is the stuff that sticks advertise EVERY. FUCKING. WHERE. Gallery? Have some ads. Settings? Get yo ads! Calculator? ADS ADS ADS! I can't tell whether they're on par or worse than Samsung with stupid bloat, data harvesting and ads everywhere. The fucking phones are also infuriatingly condescending, treating you like a dumb toddler, showing warnings about "daaaaangeroooooooous" actions you might be doing and putting 30s timers before you can hit "LET ME FUCKING CONTINUE"

Unlocking the bootloader is such a hassle, too, I gave up and used ADB Bridge to uninstall some of the bloatware to make my experience less insufferable.

The real goal that the community should be working on is to strengthen the political efforts to give people the rights to do whatever they want with phones they PURCHASE, and prohibit manufacturers from locking them down so the OWNER can’t make any changes. I would totally accept that it voids the warranty because they can’t cover all the bricked devices that result from reckless modding… but there should not be allowed any barriers between the OWNER and the software within.

And the reason for my emphasis of certain words is that the corporate world is really truly beginning to indulge the delusion that nobody ever owns anything and that purchases consumers make are merely the manufacturer granting them the privilege of indefinite loan. It all needs to stop hard and now.

It was a matter of time. We really need a good(or at least better) company to step up and make a phone. A framework phone would be fire but its gonna take years if they wanna fo it.

Xiaomi was the only manufacturer I recently kept buying my "new flagship every 3 years". If it is not possible to unlock, I'm out. I guess a Pixel will be my choice. The only thing keeping me away from Pixel were the low performance CPUs.

I feel like I'm limited to pixel phones since they're the only widely available phone that doesn't void the warranty for unlocking the bootloader. I haven't tried roms in a few years but I like having that choice. Fairphones can be a little hard to get. Are there other options? Lineage support would be ideal.

i miss the early 2010s

My current phone is an F5. One of my worst Android experiences has been this phone before I put a different ROM. Never would buy another one without being able to unlock the bootloader.

sad as fuck if true. i really liked xiaomi.

Bought a Pocophone F1 when that had insane value per dollar. Had to "wait" for a cooldown period to unlock the bootloader. I had never bought phones made for a Chinese market before. I have never felt more disrespected by a phone company, forcing me to use their launcher for 2 weeks, so condescending. I am a functioning human adult, thank you very much, I'll chose my own software. Never interested in made for Chinese market phones again.

Sad to hear