[Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Guides, News, & Discussion] unh1nged:
Agreed. Samsung is about to alienate a large portion of users, and for myself, this will be the last Samsung phone I ever buy if they continue locking out the bootloader.

I started rooting with the Samsung Omnia II, which was a Windows Phone OS, and so began my love of rooting and modifying with the invaluable aid of modaco forums and devs then xda almost solely a phone or 2 later. I believe the first Android version that I tried was something like 2.1 or even older. 1.8 comes to mind, but it was a long time ago. I was off of work for my 3rd back surgery and then neck surgery, so I had plenty of time to install and reinstall, tweak, curse, read, curse, fix, smile, read, think, tweak, curse, read, fix, smile, repeat etc., and it made the time go by like lightning. Heavy opiate painkillers also had a hand in that, but that's a different rabbit hole. Anyways, since then SGS1, S3, S5, Note3, Note Edge, S8+ and now Note9. I also have 3 Samsung monitors, ssd drives, external blue-ray burner, I've also gotten family members and friends to buy Samsung products over the years. But the whole time I owned the S8+, I felt ripped off somehow. I have many root dependent apps that I have paid money for, some of which $30 or more, which are now useless without that ability. I owned a Samsung Note Pro 12.2 until last year when I let a "friend" stay with my over night because he had nowhere else to go, and he decided to take it with him when he left. This AFTER having been stolen once already, but I tracked it to a persons home 45 minutes away, drove there, knocked on their door and asked some very surprised people for my tablet back from the little blond thief that stole it who is staying with them, thus getting it back. Of course, knowing this story, the "friend" that took it the second time, knew to remove it. And with it, went my only outlet for root joy. I went through 4 months of hell with Virgin Mobile Canada, sent back one Note9, and in the process a series of useless emails and calls to Sasmsung Canada.

I originally chose Samsung over Apple, for this reason. Now I just have a hate hate relationship with Apple because, despite their hardware being solid, their control over their user via OS is even now, for too much.

If I am paying $1000+ for a piece of technology, I want complete control over my property. If I buy a Bugatti Veyron, and it comes with a governor on it, restricting the top speed to 100/mph, even though I may never reach the 406/mph capability, if I take it to the Autobahn or the the Volkswagen Group test track in Lower Saxony, Germany which has a 5.6 mile straightaway, you better believe I want the option available.

Not to mention the ability to have options stoked the flames of competition between Intel and AMD. I started buying AMD early on, because it just made sense that you could overclock it to nearly the speed of the Intel in the same class, for a fifth of the price. What happened soon after? Intel opened up overlocking on ALL it's future processors, and continues to do so. And neither company has ever started to recap their processors, wasting ridiculous amounts of research and development to lock out the option, that could be better spent on chip improvement. And what resulted from that competition? The processor speeds we have today, which have almost made overclocking an unnecessary endeavor. Prior to this, Intel had a monopoly on the CPU market, and slowly doled out improvements which cost over $1000 for their base chip. Who knows how far back we'd be, without a company seeing the benefit in allowing the customer their individual control over the product.

Samsung has already set up the condition that VOIDs the warranty if the bootloader has been accessed to cover their behinds. Most phone companies offer protection plans because Samsung has recoiled its warranties in response. So now that all that is in place, what do they do? Lock out the bootloaders. They are spitting on a pretty large portion of their customer base. Just look at the user stats of this site, and the preferences given to Samsung over the years. But that tide is turning. People have a lot of viable options, and there is less and less reason to stick to Samsung. They should actually be funding XDA devs that are trying to break or bypass that lock, because even that hope is solely responsible for some people holding onto, or deciding to buy, one of their phones.

I'm sure you are all aware of these things, as you are here for those same reasons, and more of your own involving your own unique situations/stories. I'm just venting, but also offering my experience so others can know they aren't alone by any means in their frustration, and to thank devs and forum users such as elliwigy. I'm also going to be writing a formal letter to Samsung, that will likely make no difference, but hopefully have the effect of being a squeaky wheel that gets the grease that loosens the lock on the bootloader, or the straw that broke the bootloaders lock, so Samsung can stop locking the gift horsephone in the boot.... ya, i'll probably leave the analogies out of the letter. It definitely gets frustrating when a company gets big, that they all inevitably have to start putting the suck in successful. I suppose it's what sets the companies with good values and ethics that are forward thinking apart from those who've lost sight of that need.

In conclusion, I just want to say that the collective efforts of the devs and the hopeful wishes of the forum subscribers have accomplished much over the years, and I am confident will continue to in spite of the effort to restrict individuality by the plague that is consumerism and the companies who leverage it, so thank you to all of you, and know you have our support, figuratively and literally.

(Notice the Donate to the effort link on the first page guys, even a dime a day becomes a dollar, and the more the merrier, so these devs can do what they do for us)

Anyone who took the time to read, thanks. I just had a spur of the moment impulse to write and decided to let it run, hopefully it wasn't a waste of time for anyone.

Take care.