This is a really bad development which I see more and more:
Google and other companies try to close down phones more and more and make them less repairable, software and hardware wise.
All under the cover of security, but it actually just results in less comfort for the user.
Hardware wise we saw this with gluing phone components and making the battery not exchangeable.
Software wise we first saw this that phones were becoming more difficult to root, then we saw bootloaders locking becoming a thing (with more and more complex unlock procedures) and no way to access bricked phones (aka the firehose topic we have here.). Google even tries to block this more and more, with apps not from google play becoming hard to install. (Google will require developer verification to install Android apps, including sideloading)
Now it’s very difficult to back up app data or edit the host file, which is both easy with Windows or Linux (and older Android versions).
I hate that people are using google’s marketing arguments that this is “more secure” and “evil people use it”.
Fairphone is doing good in a lot of sectors here (easily repairable, battery exchangeable, bootloader can be relatively easily unlocked) but could still improve in some sectors, e.g. giving out the firehose file.
Every method can be used to create harm, but it can also benefit a lot of users to access their own smartphone more freely. And this is what fairphone is also about, right?
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