How come this wasn't getting more attention?
I was expecting something like $15 to deter script kiddies that are following outdated/misleading/incomplete YouTube flashing tutorials and will end with a brick but $200????
It's a giant "FUCK YOU" to the paying customer. If it was me, I'd flip the phone on eBay and never ever buy anything from Asus anymore
Yeah, $200 is like the price of a fully functioning entry level samsung A15/16 series smartphone which would get 5-6 years of updates! This is ridiculous. Being a niche brand and pulling these stunts is stupid.
I think after all the bad press they got with the gamernexus warranty mess, it might be something to point them out to.
Been hearing lots of bad things about Asus, especially the whole Gamers Nexus thing
not even Google prevents you from unlocking the bootloader on their phones so why are these Manufacturers doing this? what's their reasoning behind this ?
not even Google
Google are one of the best manufacturers for this, they have always supported and provided instructions for unlocking as far as I can remember
Google benefits from the development made. Asus not so much. Been using pixel phones for ages now.
Xiaomi's reasoning was they produce different phones for Chinese internal and for global market. A lot of scalpers bought the Chinese version, took it outside China, flashed a global rom and sold it. Chinese versions have limited frequency support and sometimes different chipsets, the problem was buyers of these phones nagged to Xiaomi's support and left bad reviews, even though it wasn't Xiaomi's fault.
Yes, it sounds bullshit, I'm just illustrating, that if you ask companies for reasons, they can tell you some similar stories.
The good part, is that bootloader opening workflow was not the best, but at least acceptable for me compared to Asus'. You had to register your IMEI with a Xiaomi account, than wait a week and you could open it (This was the workflow like 5 years ago, and I still have the same phone, I don't know if they changed it). This way they could slow down the scalpers, and they could see if someone want to mass open a lot of phones at the same time.
Guess I'll have to avoid ASUS products if they're willing to fuck over customers like this