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- ASUS has apparently withdrawn the ability to unlock the bootloader on its phones.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.
ASUS is apparently killing the posibility of me being a potential customer of their smartphones.
Rooting users are only a small percentage of all users so they probably won’t even notice unfortunately.
sent from rooted phone
People who just want a vanilla experience likely all buy Samsung.
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.
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.
Consumers seem to be too dumb for their own good.
Regulators seem to be too captured for consumers’ good.
Well there goes any compelling reason to buy their phones lol
I was genuinely thinking about going with an ASUS phone next because of the unlockable bootloader, this really sucks to see.
Same here. Well they lost a potential costumer.
I remember owning their Transformer tablet back when Honeycomb first launched.
Why do so many phone manufacturers hate letting you unlock their bootloaders? Every Google phone lets you do this, and they probably have the most secure Androids of them all.
Google shouldn’t be our shining light on phone rules lol
pixels are by far the best to degoogled your phone and to have privacy/security/freedom actually
they go above and beyond letting you unlock your bootloader
Oneplus? Bootloader is easily unlocked and it can be debloated easily after root
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This 100%
Rooting is a terrible security risk and there’s no point in doing it. You won’t see the popular roms like GrapheneOS, /e/, or CalyxOS supporting it.
Lol this is the technology page and you’re going to try to make the argument to not root(/jailbreak) a phone?.. Genuinely lold
Yes…? You can have custom roms without sacrificing security. There’s genuinely no reason to root anymore.
Can’t tell if troll or not
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See why GrapheneOS only supports pixels
Probably because they know their OS is a duct-taped piece of garbage which could fall to pieces if you look at it wrong while unlocked.
Very easy way to remove an almost perfect phone from my list of upgrade considerations.
Exactly !!
This is such an anti-consumer move, by refusing to unlock the bootloader Asus hinders the ability of users to extend their devices’ life beyond Asus’s original support window by flashing alternative ROMs…
I’d like to see right to repair laws expanded to right to unlock. I think you could make a reasonable argument that a working device that’s not receiving security updates is just as broken as a device that’s experienced a hardware failure.
As much as I agree, I don’t think our legislators are knowledgable enough to be able to handle the issue, and majority of the users don’t care enough to push for something like this. This isn’t like USB-C vs Lightning where users are sick of buying cables and chargers, so the issue is much more visible.
A typical example of planned obsolescence what an effective way of killing my plans to get an Asus phone as my next daily driver assuming this is true
Some important context from the article:
A Reddit user claims that the company’s developer liaison on its Telegram channel has no knowledge of any such development. “According to them, the unlock tool server is in maintenance and will resume in Q3,” the person writes; We’ve written to ASUS to clarify the situation and will update this article when and if we hear more.
But here is the thing why do I need to use a tool to connect to a server just to be allowed to unlock the bootloader? I don’t and didn’t need such a thing to unlock the bootloader of my Samsung Galaxy phone (planned obsolescence ladies and gentlemen)
But here is the thing why do I need to use a tool to connect to a server just to be allowed to unlock the bootloader
It’s been this way since I first flashed a custom ROM on my 2011 Xperia and I’ve never gotten it. It seems so useless. Either Huawei or Xiaomi wanted me to provide a REASON for unlocking.
I think Nexus phones were unlockable without making a request to a server. I might be wrong though. But I do miss the Nexus line.
Pixel devices don’t require permission via a server. Unlocking is enabled via developer settings on the device.
Doing it any other way is user-hostile.
Unless you get Verizon’ed that is
I suspect it’s to keep a record which can be used to defend themselves from lawsuits. “You caught that virus after you removed our protections, so it’s your own fault. Here’s the receipt.”
Considering their crappy major release and security update support, rooting and flashing custom images is basically a requirement.
… 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.
asus has killed the possibility of me being a potential customer then lol
I still don’t buy Sony over the rootkit escapade and that was nearly 30 years ago.
I bought their Zenfone 5 in 15 and I always chose ASUS MoBos whenever I need to upgrade. Not anymore.
Boo you whore. Asus really is just kicking itself in the dick the last 5 years or so.
No kidding, especially with their recent motherboards-catching-on-fire fiasco.
They used to be such a good company; what happened?
Oh come on. I wanted a zenfone, I wanted the compact phone with a headphone jack and actual components. But if they’re being cocky about it, there’s no point. I guess I’ll have to find another brand
Tbh the headphone jack is kind of mid on the zf8 anyway. Every IEM and headphone I had had a treble spike and lower bass on it for some reason.
Agreed. I use a USBC dongle DAC now because the headphone jacks are usually underpowered.
Still better than being stuck on bluetooth crap.
At least there is still kind of some alternatives, like the Xperia 5IV (and the upcoming Xperia 5V) and galaxy s23 though they have problems of their own.
Namely poor cooling on the xperias and the tens of versions of Galaxy phones making finding a compatible custom rom and kernel pretty much impossible if you live in the wrong parts of the world
Which means, legally, you can no longer own even the hardware of a Zenfone you bought, you now only license it. Since their OEM software is proprietary and in nearly every software’s TOS they can revoke your license to it at any time for any reason, which would effectively brick the phone if bootloader unlocking is not possible.
It’s my device. I will do with it whatever the fuck I desire
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.
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You will own nothing and be happy.
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.
