On the phone front, do I end up in the same position if I buy a phone direct from the manufacturer versus getting one with a discount through my carrier? Do the carrier phones have extra security to keep their bloatware in place no matter what or is an unlocked bootloader an unlocked bootloader and none of that stuff will matter?
I'm not super knowledgeable on the subject, but one issue I do know is that certain carriers will prevent you from unlocking the bootloader on their carrier version of phones, preventing you from installing a different OS on them. A few of them do this iirc, but Verizon is particularly notorious for this. Getting an unlocked/carrier-agnostic phone is the safest bet for getting around that problem.
On the phone front, do I end up in the same position if I buy a phone direct from the manufacturer versus getting one with a discount through my carrier? Do the carrier phones have extra security to keep their bloatware in place no matter what or is an unlocked bootloader an unlocked bootloader and none of that stuff will matter?
Thoughts on Fairphone?
I'm not super knowledgeable on the subject, but one issue I do know is that certain carriers will prevent you from unlocking the bootloader on their carrier version of phones, preventing you from installing a different OS on them. A few of them do this iirc, but Verizon is particularly notorious for this. Getting an unlocked/carrier-agnostic phone is the safest bet for getting around that problem.
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