[OnePlus 10 Pro] scottpetrack:
[Background/Context: I'm going to do two things here. First, I need to confess the terrible, sinful thing I did earlier this week. I need to share with you here, because it's Passover this week and my chapter of "BA" (Brickers Anonymous :) doesn't meet). I feel certain that there are other Brickers who can benefit from my tale of immorality. But also: I know that at least SOME of the "root cause" of my behavior lies with the authorities at OPPO. I have a concrete suggestion for what OPPO could/should do, which is NOT just to "make OPlus Flash Tool free". I hope that someone relevant at OPPO will read this.]

So this week, I succumbed to temptation and truly bricked my OnePlus 10 Pro 5G. I admit that i can't really live without a phone, and I put my life on hold for almost 11 hours, and tried to restore my phone, despite not having valid login credentials to a Flash Tool. (For those of you who live under rocks: all Qualcomm-based phones, such as those by OnePlus, have a special mode called "emergency download" or "edl" mode. But to summarize things very succinctly: EVERY OnePlus model **EXCEPT** for the OnePlus 10s can be restored by its owner from brickness to health by using an freely available tool to flash a special ".OFP" version on its stock ROM. But uniquely for the OnePlus 10s, those Flash tools require the user to enter some log in information. One often reads that ONLY employees of true OnePlus service centers ever have bona fide logins, but this is false. There are a several random individuals who seem to be completely unaffiliated with OnePlus, and whose offers include things such as one-time login credentials, or ones that are valid for an hour, or a day. There is even one who (in exchange for a service fee) instructs you (or helps you) to install the required drivers and flashTool, and in addition, TeamViewer which he then users to take complete remote control of your computer -- and also control of YOU -- your job is to press the right key combination and attach the phone in edl mode when told to do so.

I'm going to be brief, because I've already not been brief, and just say the obvious: I'm sure that most all of you reading this learned from your mothers when you were young NOT to just hand over control of your computer to random strangers you might meet online. Perhaps even your mother didn't imagine that she would need to add anything like "But if you DO decide to do that, CERTAINLY don't pay them MONEY for the priviledge.

I am not going to lie: that's exactly what I did. And the end result of engaging in such reckless behavior might or might not surprise you: Within a few minutes, my phone was restored and completely functional. My money was not spent in vain, and the random stranger did absolutely nothing with the power I gave him. One important note I can make to help anyone who might do what I did is this: Don't give a stranger control / access to your computer; create a Virtual Machine, and install all the required software into it. This way, he will have no access to anything unecessary, and even if he does install malware, you will just destroy the entire machine as soon as your phone is restored.

The fact is that I needed my phone more than I needed the US $10 that one of the merchants online charges to unbrick one's phone. I felt that using the virtual machine reduced my exposure to risk. (I assume that the rules of xda and of this forum prohibit me from naming the actual indivdual i used, but if you need/want that infomration , just ask.

Still, you might feel as I did, that I did something VERY risky, which could have caused me real damage. I get the impression that many of you are offended by the very idea that you have to pay money to get something of value. If that's you, I find your emotion is VERY misplaced. You should be highly offended at something else entirely: the OPPO should choose a strategy that subjects its users to real danger in order to make a few extra bucks from them -- it's absolutely shameful. The very fact that they would do this is evidence that they care so little for their users that we'll never get them to just stop demanding that users log in. But it turns out that this is wrong!! Because they changed things again for all models of phones starting with the OnePlus 11s. Once again, no login is required to use the Flash Tool.

I won't go into the technical details, but it turns out that in order to avoid making it necessary to log in to use the Flash Tool, OPPO made an important change to the phones starting with the Onelus 11s -- they don't have encrypted files systems. The whole subject is a bit convoluted, but for me, personally, I thnk that the simplest and most straight-forward rationale for the choices that OPPO has made is this: between the very angry feedback that OnePlus received from users about this business of not being able to restore our bricked phones, or being able to restore them only at great risk to ourselves, OPPO tried to "do the right thing" and changed things, starting with OnePlus 11. So if they knew they had made a mistake, why didn't they make the change retroactively apply also to the OnePlus 10 family? The answer might be: because phones in the OnePlus 10 family have encrypted partitions, and I noted above that for such phones, the flash tool really needs to have a log in. It would seem that even if OPPO wanted to do the right thing for OnePlus 10 owners, it just couldn't, for technical reasons.

So I'd like to end this LONG post with some good news: OPPO is wrong to think that it just isn't possible to make their tool freely available to AND useable by OnePlus 10 owners. There is a very simple solution for how to do this -- one that is not only good for OnePlus 10 owners; it's even much better business for OPPO!! So what, you might ask, is this miracle solution? Just this: announce a change that from a certain date on, all owners of a phone in the OnePlus 10 famiy will be able to flash their phones using the currently available OPlus Flash Tool -- they simply need to make sure that they have joined the OnePlus Community, and then they can use their OnePlus Community login credentials with OPlus Flash tools! In fact, it's almost as if the software was designed with this in mind, because in addition to a username and password, the flash Tools require the user to choose the "Region" he is logging in from. Some of the Regions are indeed geographical, but in fact the most important Region today is called "In Company." That is the Region which OnePlus service employees use when they log in at work. "All" they would have to do is to add a new "Region" to the Flash Tool called "OnePlus Account Holder", and relay logins within that Region to the OnePlus Community account login servers.

Doing this would have benefits for OPPO and their OnePlus brand, not only for the owners of OnePlus 10 phones. It would signal to all of us a real change in the core marketing message of OPPO, from what it is today, which many users feel is ""OPPO -- the company that really enjoys pissing off its core user enthusiasts" to "Joining the OnePlus Community provides real value to our members."

I can only hope that someone relevant at OPPO has read this. Certainly I thank ANYONE who has stuck with this post up to here. But I would be thrilled to discuss this proposal with the relevant people at OPPO. One always hears that " there will never be a new Flash Tool for OnePlus 10 owners". The beauty of what is suggested here is that indeed, no new Flash Tool is needed; just a new "Region" to be defined in the configuration files, and some plumbing added entirely in the back-end, to connect the Flash Tool logins with OnePlus community logins, for users in "Region: OnePLus Communiy"