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user_7832 | 5 days ago

Slight tangent, but I find it mind boggling that so few phones offer bootloader unlocking - which is essential if you truly want to own your phone.

I was recently in the market for a new phone, and (correct me if I'm wrong) the only companies that offer bootloader unlocking is Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and OnePlus. Samsung and Xiaomi I think both technically support it but it's a pain in the butt practically.

That's... a shockingly small list!? .

In my case, after adding "I want a CPU that isn't crap while being expensive" (eliminating Tensor) and "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub flagship performance" (eliminating Nothing), OnePlus and Motorola were pretty much the only two options!

Is it that hard to get a phone you can truly own? I don't know, I honestly hope I'm missing something.

discuss

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matthewkayin|5 days ago

To take this a step further. I want a phone that is small (doesn't have to be tiny, just iPhone SE 2020 or smaller, please), has a replaceable battery, has an unlocked bootloader, has a headphone jack, and costs $400 or less.

It doesn't need to have a cutting-edge processor or tons of RAM and storage space or a 120hz screen or razor-thin bezels or a studio-worthy camera, yet somehow all these things are prioritized on the market over a basic, reliable phone.

0_____0|5 days ago

I guarantee you that, given your requirements, this will never be a product that you can buy.

Hardware projects live and die on scale. The engineering and tooling costs are a similar order of magnitude whether you make 1000 phones or 1,000,000. If you can guarantee that you have an accessible market for a million devices, then you're starting to get into the region of scale where this would be an OK idea.

Mind you, that's a million users who are cool with all the design tradeoffs you had to make to ingress protection, software performance with modern android, and form factor in order to get your desirable characteristic.

The Punkt MP02 is at roughly the price point and "niche-ness" as the product you describe here, and that sold for almost $400. They could afford to build in about the same amount of functionality as a Nokia brick of yore (but with 4G radios!) for that price.

izacus|5 days ago

Whenever someone tries to build a phone that even tries to tick those boxes y'all just find new excuses to not actually pay for it.

PlatoIsADisease|5 days ago

Have you looked at Motorola? I'm not sure they have all of those features, but me and you think similarly and when I did research, I ended up choosing their $130 phone for my contractors.

But I main the $900 pixel.

They are so similar its weird, but Motorola was slow with snapchat and the keyboard some time.

user_7832|5 days ago

I forgot to mention in my comment, I also wanted it to be small.

Instead, the phone I got ended up being bigger than my last phone, and hasn't (unsurprisingly) helped my RSI at all. Go figure lol.

protoman3000|5 days ago

You should check the phones from Unihertz, “the worlds smallest smartphone”

rabf|5 days ago

The motorola razr flip phones are great in my opinion.

iberator|5 days ago

there are websites made for you with millions of parameters to find the phone you need. not amazon or ebay

renewiltord|5 days ago

Most 2012 era used phones will work here. Pick one off eBay.

stonogo|5 days ago

Does the OnePlus process work for people? They've got a form that allows you to beg them to let you unlock your phone, but it's never worked for me. Motorola works similarly but it does work, which is why I stick with them.

Nekobai|5 days ago

Is this country-specific? I've owned plenty of OnePlus devices over the years and the have all being unlockable without any issues, or without having to ask anything from anyone.

fc417fc802|5 days ago

Meanwhile Pixel doesn't require me to fill out any forms or contact anyone which is why I only use those at this point. IIRC in at least some cases the initial flip of the toggle requires internet access but that doesn't really bother me.

If the process requires anything beyond "internet access" I'm not purchasing the device.

nosioptar|4 days ago

My op 7 pro didn't require using their form in any way.

I did have to be careful to buy the variant supported by lineageos. (I think the t mobile version of this phone does require using op form, which I've heard rarely works.)

dheera|5 days ago

I just want Google to remove that SafetyNet crap.

Banks don't need to know if I unlocked my bootloader.

I can't even use the Waymo app either.

yoavm|5 days ago

I'd argue that banks DO need to know that you've unlocked your bootloader, but they should present you with a "Your phone bootloader is unlocked. If you don't know what it means or you didn't do it yourself, exit the app now and contact customer support."

The problem is that app makers are lazy.

fsflover|5 days ago

> (correct me if I'm wrong) the only companies that offer bootloader unlocking is Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and OnePlus

Pinephone and Librem 5 (my daily driver) do not have a locked bootloader in the first place. They are just little (GNU/)Linux computers.

craftkiller|5 days ago

The Librem 5 would be eliminated by the additional requirements of:

> "I want a CPU that isn't crap while being expensive"

> "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub flagship performance"

Adding my own experience: the battery life is also atrocious[0] and simply running a software update on a completely stock librem 5[1] managed to send it into an infinite boot loop that I was only able to recover from by flashing the factory image.

[0] Sitting on a shelf, with the screen off, not connected to cellular networks, not being used at all except to check the battery % periodically throughout the day: I got ~11 hours of battery life. My pixel 10 has been operating under the same conditions for 4 days and is still at 71% battery life (I'm intentionally draining it down to ~50% for long term storage while I wait for the bootloader to unlock in 2 years).

[1] The phone had been sitting on a shelf gathering dust for years. No software had been installed, no accounts had been set up, it had never actually been used as a phone. Could not get more "stock" than that.

izacus|5 days ago

This is a regional thing - a lot of manufacturers offer bootloader unlocking in EU when they don't in US for example. US especially is a nasty carrier monopoly where carriers are allowed (and actively defended) when they do henous lockin.

rainingmonkey|5 days ago

FxTec Pro1 comes with an unlocked bootloader, and a slide-out keyboard for the true 2010 experience!