Putting a custom OS on a phone is like trying to install Linux in 2004. Out of curiosity I had been looking at some phones here in New Zealand, available on Trade Me (our Ebay, basically) and some of those phones had a note that there was no guarantee that the boot loader could be unlocked :/
The NSA does not want Americans to be under Chinese surveillance? Is that it :)
Back Market? You don’t just order off the One Plus website and ship anywhere in the world?
If I had a job I’d buy a One Plus direct from China and put LineageOS on it. I don’t need to relock the bootloader since my phone is mainly for browsing and text/calls (no important private stuff). I don’t even log into Lemmy on my phone because the PC experience is superior.
Recently I got rid of WhatsApp (now fully deleted my account) plus I removed Signal. My battery life is incredible now. I don’t even fast-charge cos I’m too poor and my phone doesn’t support any worth-while fast charger anyway! Next step is to get LineageOS and get rid of Google Play Services. Even more performance and battery saving.
My friend ordered one but then it had to be refunded because they couldn’t get enough phones to the customers. Very small operation I suspect.
I had to look it up. Yuck. A lot of users are just beta testers aren’t they? At least with Linux you know that people care about fixing it. But Windows, it’s a mess.