Everyone here knows very well that I hate the lockdowns that modern devices have. Be it locked bootloaders (looking at you, SM-G950U) or, in the case of one of my unlockable tablet, the stock Pie ROM sabotaging root after one reboot, then soft bricking itself after a fix attempt. Oh, and the same tablet wouldn't respond to kernel controls be it with stock or custom ROM, despite root working when I tried.
The thing is, looking back on the past, I noticed that there was actually a turning point and that is what I want to discuss. For those of you who are new to Android, haven't paid attention to the early Android era or haven't read my other posts, in the early days of Android there was a MAJOR modding community. At that time, any UI or under-the-hood mod existed, and if you had the coding knowledge needed you could make your own. A few downloads and some tedious flashing later, you made your device 10-20x better than it was out of the box. You could unofficially update to as many new Android versions as your device really could hardware wise. Eventually, stuff started getting a bit too good. Then in 2014 the first phones powerful enough to be used even for 4 or more years came out. Of course, the modders over at XDA as always went crazy making supremely attractive custom ROMs (just watch High on Android's Galaxy S5 ROM videos from the era and you'll see what I'm talking about). Then comes the big elephant in the room. I think that at that point, companies realized that people were going to make "ultimate" phone and setups that were so good they would keep for as long as the hardware lasted. Already even years before HTC started adding non-removable batteries. Most people hated this hence why Samsung and others were attracting more customers. But then those companies, seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck added the non-removable battery. Of course, that didn't entirely stop battery replacements. Then of course came locked bootloaders, various low level attempts to mess with custom ROMs, etc... They don't want us to make a custom "too good" device for ourselves that we won't replace for 5 years or even more. And that is a very sad thing.
I'm not sure whether my theory is right, but whatever.
The thing is, looking back on the past, I noticed that there was actually a turning point and that is what I want to discuss. For those of you who are new to Android, haven't paid attention to the early Android era or haven't read my other posts, in the early days of Android there was a MAJOR modding community. At that time, any UI or under-the-hood mod existed, and if you had the coding knowledge needed you could make your own. A few downloads and some tedious flashing later, you made your device 10-20x better than it was out of the box. You could unofficially update to as many new Android versions as your device really could hardware wise. Eventually, stuff started getting a bit too good. Then in 2014 the first phones powerful enough to be used even for 4 or more years came out. Of course, the modders over at XDA as always went crazy making supremely attractive custom ROMs (just watch High on Android's Galaxy S5 ROM videos from the era and you'll see what I'm talking about). Then comes the big elephant in the room. I think that at that point, companies realized that people were going to make "ultimate" phone and setups that were so good they would keep for as long as the hardware lasted. Already even years before HTC started adding non-removable batteries. Most people hated this hence why Samsung and others were attracting more customers. But then those companies, seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck added the non-removable battery. Of course, that didn't entirely stop battery replacements. Then of course came locked bootloaders, various low level attempts to mess with custom ROMs, etc... They don't want us to make a custom "too good" device for ourselves that we won't replace for 5 years or even more. And that is a very sad thing.
I'm not sure whether my theory is right, but whatever.
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