[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Cruiserdude:
I hope they are, then they can see how many people are giving up on Verizon altogether when they give up on this phone. I understand that corporate contracts are more lucrative for them, but no company wants to lose customers (at least they shouldn't).

The fact is, none of the reasoning behind this makes sense. If the dev community is big enough that the subgroup of people who can't be bothered to fix their own soft bricks actually hurt profits, then the community as a whole is certainly significant enough that they wouldn't want to drive us all away. And no matter what they like to say, users racking up huge amounts of data usage from tethering on unlimited plans doesn't make much of an impact overall. Those that don't use a ton don't affect it at all, and those that are very heavy users rely on it, and will find a way anyway, even if it's keeping an older phone.

As far as the whole business thing goes, I follow that to a point, but it still doesn't make sense here. Making a bootloader un-exploitable but keeping it unlocked out of the box makes the most sense, as only certain corporate clients would want that. Then allow them to lock it if they so desire, and generate their own encryption key that not even Samsung knows. Is that not more secure? Also, those devices with a locked bootloader would still be "secure", rather than them all being locked down until an exploit is found that unlocks them all, like we had with the S3.

As far as BYOD, Verizon has no reason to be concerned with that. The security needs in such a scenario lie in the corporate IT departments, who are not the ones buying the phones. They issue platform requirements, and are responsible for ensuring security on whatever devices employees own that meet the requirements. Typically this includes requirements for certain security software, and occasionally that employees not root their phones. This is all between employees and the business though at that point, no reason for Verizon to care about that.

As far as owning your own device goes, Verizon has yet to make that a sensible option. The subsidy requires a commitment to stay with their service, but their cost to subsidize equipment is built into your bill. And your bill stays the same even after you have fulfilled your contract and they have made their subsidy money back. So buying your own device outright is just costing you double, since there's currently no way to opt out of paying for it anyway in your plan, and if there was, they would require you to switch to a new plan that's not as good of a value as those of us with unlimited currently have. So if they would simply take a given amount off my monthly bill if I didn't use the subsidy, and didn't touch my plan, it would make sense to buy my own devices outright. Until then, however, I'm forced to pay them for it anyway.

I also don't get the idea of losing my entire hardware warranty if I actually use a dev edition. I fully accept that any issues caused by my tinkering is my fault. But please explain how I should be held responsible if my screen craps out, or my flash dies, or gps stops working, or any other hardware issues that may strike and persist once flashing back to the stock software that aren't caused by my tinkering. I can't afford to pay $600 for a device, and then have no warranty support for legitimate manufacturer issues just because of how I wish to use it.

I still don't see why they don't have the normal consumer edition, and then either a separate version or a special service to lock and encrypt the bootloader for a secure corporate version for those who require it. They don't allow us to take advantage of corporate plan options, like subsidized upgrades on unlimited lines, so why force hardware on us that is specifically aimed at corporate clients?