In better times, this would at least get a class action.
Seriously are there any Android brands that do not suck and ship everywhere (not limited to the US/EU markets)??
I believe thay all have shitty operating systems. But some of them have an aftermarket OS available. Pick your OS first, then look for a phone that can run it. Here are the ones I know of:
GrapheneOS
CalyxOS (on hiatus)
Crdriod
LineageOS
That means they were making money by people running their os.
If they spend the money on re-engineering their devices not to allow it, there was a cost advantage to selling your data.
“OnePlus shoots own foot. Likely to blame consumers for it”
It’s not flashing a custom ROM. It is installing an OS of users choice. Enemy’s language shouldn’t be used if we want things to change
This is why “side load” is annoying to me. It’s installing. It is not special or different. They aren’t “blocking side loading” they’re “restricting what you can install.”
Still custom as it’s not the default
Installing linux on your Dell that came with Windows isn’t “Installing a custom OS.”
Not IMO for phones but hey, it’s a free world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You’ve been trained well.
Bruh.
What makes it “custom”? If you install Linux on a laptop that comes with Windows pre-installed, is Linux then a custom OS it’s not being a default? Why phones are any different? Calling it custom you play to the manufacturers pockets making it sound shady and unofficial giving them right to take the control from the customers devices. Soon we won’t own anything we buy.
I’ve never thought a custom ROM sounded shady.
To me it was always, “we only have vanilla or chocolate on the menu, but if you’re willing to risk bricking your phone, you can get cookies and cream.”
I picked cookies and cream.
On PC it is usually called “other”
To me it feels more like a full appliance as it’s not even intended primarily to install anything else.
But I can also see your point as a valid argument.Because for phones they kinda are custom. The smartphone hardware landscape is an absolute clusterfuck of proprietary blobs and closed source drivers and all sorts of shit that makes it so you need a lot of work to customize the base os to work on any particular device. ROMs have rather short lists of compatible phones, and each one of those had to have a build specifically developed for them. You can’t take, say, grapheneos and slap it on any phone you like.
The same applies to every pre-installed OS. They are all customized from AOSP, but only third-party operating systems are called such. That was my point there.
Many users were buying OpenPlus Pro smartphones solely because of the ability to unlock the bootloader and flash custom ROMs. People value freedom and customization. OpenPlus is shooting itself in the foot.
Oppo killed and ate OP a long time ago. They’ve just been wearing their skin like a suit up to this point, but their true nature is obvious at this point.
This is why I bought a pixel 6
This will never stop being funny
Sadly, at least in the North American market, Google’s Pixel phones are basically the last good phones you can reliably install your own ROM on.
What a sad world.
Well…So did Samsing with Samsung Knox
Knox just displays a message when you boot the device. You can still install a custom ROM. I’m typing this on a Samsung tablet running LineageOS.
Never said the fuse prevented the execution of a non-Samsung OS.
But the tripped efuse is permanent.
Oh well then… if the bastion of open and customer focused development did it
so it basically permanently “damages” the phone when you try to root it, seems like they are asking for a lawsuit at some point.
Wanna try suing Samsung before that?
I thought the difference there is that they were upfront about the feature in Knox and you can still install another OS, it just disables Pay and the Secure Notes part. Also it was something there from the start.
This feels markedly different as it’s retroactive and a full brick, which is much more severe and a bait and switch.
My last contact with it was on my Samsung S8. I was not aware of any “For your security we will monitor for OS changes” communication
Why would they start with the harder one? Samsung is much better funded, and therefore will be a much more difficult case.
And no, it does not matter that Samsung did it first.
Kinda does.
One plus joined my short list of “I can’t be bothered” companies like Samsung and Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo and some other sub par companies.
And all that while OnePlus was awesome up until the OnePlus 7 pro.
I had the 5t until last year and it was still awesome.
Holy shit. I wanted to say something constructive, but just…. holy shit. Intentional hard brick of a customer owned device….
“…long enough to become the villain.”
So never buy OnePlus products. Got it. Thanks OnePlus for making the advice so clear!
That’s what I heard. I know Samsung has been doing something like this as well.
Samsung has been blowing fuses in your phone when you root since at least 2015. I know because it happened to me. Never bought one again after that.
Samsung just does it to trigger Knox and not let you use some security minded things on the phone.
They also, however, have their phones pretty much impossible to root anymore. I don’t think most ever get a custom rom, because pretty much no one can get a Samsung phone to except one. I believe my old Note 20 Ultra is still not rootable.
I’d love to put a custom OS on mine, even if it tripped the Knox fuse (which disables the Samsung Pay NFC option). The issue I have is that no CFW allows / guarantees compatible VoLTE…and without that, phones don’t really work on Australian networks. Have to have 4G + white listed VoLTE.
Its a mess down here.
Ironically, my Duoquin F21 pro works perfectly. How they got white listed I have no idea
For me I found out when I wanted them to fix something and they refused to honour the warranty because of the blown fuse.
As far as I know, this is illegal, btw. They have to prove that the error you are reporting is caused by user action. If your battery craps out, they can’t blame it on you rooting your phone.
Yep, Samsung Knox is the feature name; does it actually prevent things or is it just “tamper evidence” for corporate devices?
It’s the blanket name for their security architecture. The thing that makes sure your kernel is blessed, tries teo tell if you’re rooted, then sets a fuse flag if anything is off. It also provides a secure, encrypted profile for your phone that bifurcates apps, data, blocks screenshots. The data from the flag is available to apps to tell that your phone is potentially insecure. For the most part, they only block Samsung banking/pay apps and make your secure partition inaccessible.
My next phone will be something degoogled. hopefully something linux.
I’ve already wiped an old disconnected android phone for use with my drone/cameras that require a mobile device.
According to the linked article it prevents the use of Samsung Pay and access to the Secure Folder (an extra layer of security you can enable that requires a second PIN to be input before you can access certain apps and files). This seems pretty reasonable, the goal is clearly to prevent access to especially sensitive data if someone has stolen the phone.
It’s not reasonable in my opinion.
I can maybe understand not wanting other operating systems in their attestation chain that is protecting a payment system from the standpoint of liability.
All of the other things are entirely hardware features that any OS should be able to use. They’re using the ARM Trusted Execution Environment (ARM TrustZone) and a embedded Secure Element to enable the ability to store cryptographiclly secured files without the system ever having access to the keys.
Both TEEs and eSEs are not a Samsung invention or IP and are enabled by hardware on the device, the TEE is part of the ARM standard and is used in a huge number of other OSs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family). Secure Elements are also widely used pieces of hardware supported by innumerable OSs and also a feature of the hardware that you paid for.
GrapheneOS also claims it’s not defending against anything real. Which makes sense as Pixels can clearly maintain security while allowing alternate OSes. So this is just hostile vendor lock-in. Disappointing as there was some speculation that OP would be the GOS OEM, but there’s no way they would do this is that was true.
Sad. Having used the OPX, OP6T, OP9, and briefly the OP10, I can honestly say their hardware is usually pretty good. I went to Graphene on a Pixel for the software. Software was always Oneplus’ weak point so it’s extra silly that they’re doing this. So many hobbyists have bought OP hardware and used it with software of their choice. They started co-developing their Oxygen OS with Oppo a while back and that’s when it really went to hell.
That makes sense. I figured they were worried that an alternate OS would be more likely to exploit their encryption somehow, but if it’s all using industry standard hardware then it really ought to be open.
Wasn’t OnePlus like worshipped because of how much support for custom ROMs wth
Yes they were and did for about 6 years, 2014-2020ish isn’t a bad run
The original “One” phone was even supposed to run cyanogemod at one point.
It was shipped with Cyanogenmod for a while.
Wow, what happened to OnePlus? They used to be so cool. Hell, the first one ran Cyanogen.
They’re basically being folded into Oppo right now. OnePlus as a company is pretty much dead.
“Open” once again being abused as angle to build something for an exit. It sounds like.
they saw GOOGLE was trying to lockdown thier bootloader, or restrict it.
So they said, “Nuh uh, we’re gonna lock it down so you can’t!” Or am I misunderstanding?
It’s more an “if everyone is doing it why not us” type of thing.
what has happened, indeed. I still use an 8T and I love it heavily, but good lord. apparently you miss a few models and the whole company changes.
I bought a OP 9Pro just before Oppo decimated the company. They moved from Oxygen OS to a poorly camouflaged version of Oppo Color OS and stripped out some of the features that made Oneplus what it was. Oppo also almost completely stopped fixing bugs, even some really serious ones that had been long documented. I recently bought a new phone and didn’t even consider
OneplusOppo.It seems to me that the only reason Oppo would do this is to preserve the revenue they get from selling customer data that should remain private. Otherwise why would Oppo care what OS people run on their hardware?
Hi, could you share what phone you bought? I’m looking for a replacement in the near future and I want to get a headstart on the research.














