Whoops! Some Pixel 8 phones were shipped with unlocked bootloaders
Back in the early days when rooting your Android phone was the “in” thing to do, some handset makers decided to embrace the power users within the Android community by offering them the ability to unlock the bootloaders of their phones (this was one of the steps towards rooting a phone).
These days, it’s not that common anymore, but it seems that for some buyers of the Google Pixel 8, it appears that Google has accidentally sent out some units of the phone which has its bootloader unlocked. This is according to posts on Reddit where users are discovering that their phone’s bootloader was shipped unlocked.
The number of affected units appears to be small, but for those who are affected by this, Google is offering them an exchange where they can send the unit back and receive a new one in its place. If you’re not too keen on having your brand new Pixel 8 having an unlocked bootloader, then you should get in touch with Google to arrange for an exchange.
But if you don’t mind experimenting with your Pixel 8 and try out some new ROMs or apps that would otherwise require an unlocked bootloader, this seems like a great opportunity.
The popularity of rooting and flashing custom ROMs has died down quite a bit over the years. This is because more handset makers, along with Google, have started to listen to their customers and have made refinements to Android where there is no less of a need to root your phone unless you have very specific things you need to do.
Source: PhoneArena
- Pixel 8 is the helpful phone engineered by Google; the new Google Tensor G3 chip is custom-designed with Google AI for...
- Unlocked Android 5G phone gives you the flexibility to change carriers and choose your own data plan[2]; it works with Google...
Note: this article may contain affiliate links that help support our authors and keep the Phandroid servers running.