How come this wasn’t getting more attention?
I was expecting something like $15 to deter script kiddies that are following outdated/misleading/incomplete YouTube flashing tutorials and will end with a brick but $200???
It’s a giant “FUCK YOU” to the paying customer. If it was me, I’d flip the phone on eBay and never ever buy anything from Asus anymore
Yeah, $200 is like the price of a fully functioning entry level samsung A15/16 series smartphone which would get 5-6 years of updates! This is ridiculous. Being a niche brand and pulling these stunts is stupid.
Been hearing lots of bad things about Asus, especially the whole Gamers Nexus thing
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It isn’t just about one company, but precedent. If today Asus can get away with this, other will look and copy the behavior. Apple and Samsung started a lot of anti-consumer precedents and no one can sure Asus isn’t the next.
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Name and shame everywhere you can, leave comments, reviews everywhere, make sure they know how pissed you are. If you’re within the return window I’d say just return it with that reason.
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not even Google prevents you from unlocking the bootloader on their phones so why are these Manufacturers doing this? what’s their reasoning behind this ?
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Xiaomi’s reasoning was they produce different phones for Chinese internal and for global market. A lot of scalpers bought the Chinese version, took it outside China, flashed a global rom and sold it. Chinese versions have limited frequency support and sometimes different chipsets, the problem was buyers of these phones nagged to Xiaomi’s support and left bad reviews, even though it wasn’t Xiaomi’s fault.
Yes, it sounds bullshit, I’m just illustrating, that if you ask companies for reasons, they can tell you some similar stories.
The good part, is that bootloader opening workflow was not the best, but at least acceptable for me compared to Asus’. You had to register your IMEI with a Xiaomi account, than wait a week and you could open it (This was the workflow like 5 years ago, and I still have the same phone, I don’t know if they changed it). This way they could slow down the scalpers, and they could see if someone want to mass open a lot of phones at the same time.
Guess I’ll have to avoid ASUS products if they’re willing to fuck over customers like this
Looks like another job for Gamers Nexus
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That’s for the motherboard replacement, not the bootloader unlock.
They’ve already unlocked and bricked their device, so they need a new motherboard.
Thanks, deleted my comment. I saw a second person on the thread who had the price quoted to them, but I didn’t see context on whether or not they were getting a mobo replaced as well.
I had a similarly nightmarish experience with Asus over their phone some years ago. I was a long time Asus fan in the PC sphere, now none of my tech is ASUS.
Even trying to buy anything from them directly is damn near impossible. Tried purchasing a desktop from their website a few weeks back, and the system wouldn’t accept my address as valid. I talked to their support team, they told me they have to escalate it and I’d hear back in 24-48 hours.
Never heard back. Ended up going through Lenovo, and that was painless.
I used to almost exclusively recommend Asus or Lenovo to my family and friends, but I guess its just Lenovo now.
Well they lost a customer with recommendations to other possible customers… you’re not the loser here
