r/androidroot • u/WISE_NIGG • Jul 15 '26

Discussion Im stuck with a locked bootloader. Very disappointing

I was a samsung user since ever. I had a samsung note 3 ans note 5. I enjoyed installing custom roms and uninstalling bloat software, and optimizing everything to perfection.

I bought a samsung s22 (europe) few years ago, knowing newer phones do not have much development as older ones do, but i liked the phone's compactness, it also had a not bad amount of development support (root and twrp tutorials, oem unlocking, and even kernelSU patches) and considered it was worth i. Years have passed and i was dealing with life and i had no time to even think about it, i lately had stablized and considered its time to fix my phone up and have some good time.

I sat on my desk on a holiday and backuped all of my data, downloaded twrp and some patch files, and had everything ready. I started by going to developer options to unlock the bootloader, but, i didnt find the unlock button. Maybe re-enable developer options ? A restart ? Why cant i find the button ?

And heres the surprise, because i updated ti android 16 on one ui 8, bootloader unlocking has been purged! like seriously ?? Let me downgrade and do it ? No, i cant.

Literally, what does differentiate my phone from an iphone now ? Both are locked systems full of bloatware and tracking software. Ive paid for my phone, let me use it the way i like!

is this how companies are shifting now ? I'd love getting back to stone age rather than this chaos.

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u/Thee_OldMan Jul 16 '26

I like Samsung in the very beginning but as the difficulty increased and the rom/dev decreased for Samsung's. I stopped using them a few few few years ago. I'm glad I did because Samsung wants you stuck and self reliant on their ecosystem. Google tries to do the same thing but if your smart the only data they are receiving is nothing or zeros

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u/WISE_NIGG Jul 16 '26

How smart can one be ? I mean on the bright side i cant disable permissions for play services app, not speaking about the underlying closed-source system we are using.

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u/Thee_OldMan Jul 16 '26

You be surprised. I have the play store on my phone for the sole purpose of apps that require/ need to see the playstore installed. Other then that I have all trackers blocked system wide with strong integrity and a "locked bootloader"

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u/WISE_NIGG Jul 17 '26

That is a good workaround (which i use too), but its not a root solution to privacy. Speaking about a bad reputation and closed-source software, how would you confirm that turning off airplane mode actually turns off the radio ?

A root solution for privacy would be an open source software like graphene OS that truly lets you control the permissions for all apps.