When you buy something you should have the right to repair it and modify it.
Currently, everything is basically a renters agreement, where you pay for something you have zero rights to modify or opt out of.
Few problems:
- Safteynet (play integrity) and root detection
There are magisk tweaks to help combat this but its a annoying game of cat and mouse. Some apps like chase have particularly annoying root detection to deal with. Also regaring safteynet once google fully enforces hardware attestation passing safteynet with tweaks will be borderline impossible (most tweaks try to spoof older phones that don’t support safteynet hardware attestation).
- Widevine
Many streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc) will downgrade your video quality to 480p-540p due to L3 from unlocking the bootloader (a step thats usually required before you can root).
- Physical security (potential risk)
Unlocking the bootloader is the first step to allowing for rooting and custom roms. One pro/con is when you unlock the bootloader you are partially at risk to a evil maid attack (some one with physical acess to your phone can compromise it). While difficult to do automatically (and probably very very rare) some one could hypothetically place a malicious bootloader that could steel data. The risk of this is mostly low but does exist.
once google fully enforces hardware attestation passing safteynet with tweaks will be borderline impossible
Never gonna happen. Full hardware attestation would give Google all the cards and too much power over manufacturers. Samsung is the largest Android manufacturer and they’re making people jump though hoops to unlock bootloader precisely because they don’t want to end up with full attestation.
Samsung and Google have been locked into a power struggle for many years now and they’re both careful about keeping the armistice. Samsung maintains a set of apps that mimic Google’s, ready to go in case Google ever pulls a Huawei and kicks them off Play.
security??
You can do things to improve security with root access. Better yet, with boot loader access you can make your phone much much more secure with graphene os
I don’t know if flashing a random ROM from xda because there’s no official builds available for my phone is considered a security improvement
Strange that the focus point of this article is rooting, you can modify your device to install custom firmware etc without needing root exploits anymore!
Depends on the phone, many come with locked bootloaders
Many can be easily unlocked
But few can be relocked.
?? If you unlock BL by fastboot method, it’s trivial to re-lock it.
The only non-reversible method is usually via manufacturer unlock portal.
Even when using another OS? Been trying to find info on relocking my /e/ OS install on my 1+7P and haven’t had any love luck.
Cursory glance at XDA tells me that OnePlus devices need an unlock token for that device to re-lock the bootloader but you would have to roll back to the original factory firmware to do so.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/relock-bootloader.4412627/
Sucks that vendors can keep such a tight control on what you can do with your device. Would be nice to have the possibility to safeguard your device with any OS of your choice.
I’ve owned an android phone for over 10 years and have rooted most of them. To be honest, in that time I’ve rarely come across something that I’ve wanted to do but been unable to do without rooting. Generally anything I want to do also isn’t possible through rooting either. Same with custom ROMs, recently it seems you end up losing features rather than gaining them.
I would trade every half-assed Google feature update for a hosts based adblock capability.
That’s the sole reason that I root every device that I own.
And NO. A PiHole is not, repeat NOT a silver bullet. Nor is a local VPN with custom DNS.
