[Google Pixel 8 Pro] eltoddo:
Yeah @FakeGemstone, I was afraid of this (hence my earlier cautionary post) and I now have reason to believe you're correct.

@Old faithful, I think you should really reconsider buying from Google if it's not too late for you. Searching Pixel bootloader unlock disabled telus gave me reasonable doubt that you'll be able to do what you want to do. I see the Pixel XL was easily unlockable, but I'm also seeing results that indicate carriers do make the decision on a phone-by-phone basis, possibly changing that policy on devices over time. I hope they'd never change it for a Pixel phone, but there's a risk that they may change policy after you unlock, and if they force a relock, could factory reset your device in the process. Although I can't see how they'd get away with doing something so heinous without giving you a heads up. But it appears your carrier CAN enforce it, sending commands do to so across the Cell network.

To that end, just wanted to quickly follow up now that my Google purchased "unlocked" Pixel 8 Pro is in hand as of yesterday. Short answer: it'll ship carrier/SIM unlocked, but locked bootloader you can easily unlock yourself.

I was curious to see what getting the phone from Google "unlocked" meant straight out of the box. After first boot of the phone, I didn't let it connect to the internet (no carrier SIM in device, no wifi set up). As soon as I got to the home screen, went straight to settings check the shipping build number and to enable dev options to allow the Allow OEM Unlock in the dev options. Don't recall the build number since I've since upgraded to latest, but I recall the date of the build being sometime in early-mid November. Anyway, what surprised me was that the Allow OEM Unlock option was greyed out and disabled with the note on the option that I'd need to connect to the internet or contact my carrier to enable the option. Once I let it connect to wifi, the option was enabled... after numerous google apps, (google keyboard? Rally??) desperately raced each other to "phone" home.

The bootloader definitely shipped locked. Not sure why I'm surprised because if Google shipped unlocked bootloaders, banking apps (that check) and Google Pay/Wallet would never work. Makes sense: Google would never ship a product that would block payments using their services, or give you an experience where an app refuses to function properly on your "out of the box" phone.

If you search pixel oem unlock greyed out, you'll find lots of current and previous generation Pixel owners throwing tantrums over the fact that their carrier won't unlock their device until its paid, and not being able to unlock the bootloader as a result. In fact, it seem that even those who got their carrier to "unlock their phone," they got a SIM unlock on the phone, but the bootloader was still locked. But also Pixel XL owners who didn't have this issue. Again, this hints to decision making at the carrier level.

I think the word "unlock" being used to either unlock the phone's SIM, OR unlock the bootloader is what is causing uncertainty. While we understand that distinction, we're a tiny minority of users. The rest post confusing queries to various message boards struggling to understand why they can't do what they want, with quality answers usually non-existant.