[LG V30 Questions & Answers] schwinn8:
S20 loses the headphone jack, and my wife uses wired headphones often (although we just bought her some wireless buds (Sony, during the Prime-Day sale) and she loves them so far, so she may not need this going forward. I found I almost never use my headphone jack, and I'd be fine with keeping track of a dongle if that's what's needed for the few times I need it (usually on flights, but that's about it). ChazzMatt and others may care about this more, but I may be willing to let it go since I rarely use it. Beyond that, the S20 is much more expensive as well, which is why I wasn't chasing it down... but that could change by the end of the year, and I'm not in a rush (tech always drops in price, after all).

As far as I saw, the root-ability on the S10 was like $65... but I would like confirmation on this. This is the telegram post that I saw about this: https://t.me/s/Afaneh92UnlockChannel I got that from the S10 forum here on XDA. I know someone on this thread has done this with their new S10, so I'd like to know if this is the same thing they did? Looking back, this seems to be @danbest82 so if you can comment, that would be great!

@gimpy1 - ChazzMatt's post is showing carrier unlocked versions, not BL unlock. To BL unlock, it seems you need to pay to have this happen, as seen in my paragraph above. BLunlock lets you apply different ROMs. Note the biggest thing I see here that gets confusing is that foreign-market devices are almost always unlocked... only USA phones get locked down (for no good reason). So, many of the posts may be specific to those devices... or, worse yet, Exynos CPU phones which are easier to unlock as well. Snapdragon makes this harder, and unfortunately they are not consistent on those forums when they say "how to unlock" so be careful.

I also saw that Magisk can root the phone directly, without needing BLunlock (see https://xdaforums.com/t/magisk-root-for-the-galaxy-s10-series.3918699/ ) but I haven't dived deep enough to prove it to myself either. Also note, topjohnwu, the famed Magisk dev, is now working for Google (https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/05/17/google-hires-an-android-community-rooting-guru/) so who knows if we'll be able to do this much longer anyway?

Personally, I don't need BLunlock. After all, I'm still running VS996 on my V30 and I'm fine with that. I see no need to even go to Pie. I certainly would LIKE more security patches, but it's not a deal-breaker... I know of no one who has actually had their phone compromised remotely (aside from via malware, which you can get on any phone anyway, particularly if you frequently sideload, which I don't need to do much anyway), so it doesn't really concern me. Of course, in Sammy-land, you'll also get more updates (I think they have 11 already even for the S10? Either way, they're supporting for more years than anyone else...) so that's good enough for me. I like the idea of custom ROMs but there are always too many restrictions and limitations, so I don't bother anymore (eg, I use Wifi/VOLTE all the time, hence why I'm on VS996 to this day - no custom ROM can do this on VZ, towers, apparently).

As for root, I certainly like what that gets me. If I can get it with a simple Magisk install, then sure I'd do it. But I don't seem to NEED it really. I can backup everything I need without it, and I don't care about "bloatware" as it's easily disabled anyway even with stock ROM.

Again, that's my preference... it may not be yours. I have just found that I don't need that deep a control anymore. Android has matured enough to let users control those things well enough, so it's not that big of a deal anymore. On the other hand, I do want the freedom to change carriers... just in case. So I'll aim to get a device that allows that (ie, one that is carrier unlocked)...