If anyone cares, GrapheneOS lets you override carrier settings for VoLTE. No workarounds needed.
What’s the benefit of volte?
Esp forcing it?
The article implies simply rooting will do - something I haven’t done in quite a while, but last I knew didn’t involve wiping your existing setup.
Enabling root has always required a device wipe. It’s unfortunate if you want to do it well after receiving your device and using it for months with the stock software.
Not in my experience, but again that was quite some time ago - I think it was Android 6 the last time I did it.
ETA: although now that I think about it, it was technically done in an “unsafe” manner by exploiting vulnerabilities. For the more safety-concerned, maybe a wipe was preferred.
Typically unlocking the bootloader requires a full wipe. It’s a security method intended to keep an attacker from compromising your OS to access your data if the phone is stolen.
I’ve never rooted a phone without requiring a wipe, but I’ve owned mostly Samsung
I’ve owned pixels and Nexus and you could unlock without wipe. Locking required a wipe. Now both do not sure when it changed though.
Even old Samsung phones would let you root and flash custom roms without wiping, the bootloader was open from the factory and you could just override your recovery and system partition with Odin. That’s how I did it with my Galaxy Gio during the Android 2.2 days
No now it does. Before you could unlock your bootloader and not wipe. Locking it has always required a wipe. Now both do for some reason.
It’s so that someone else can’t unlock your bootloader and install malware. Like if you’re entering a country and they say “please unlock your phone” and they take it, they could unlock and replace the bootloader without you being able to tell.
It definitely didn’t always require a wipe - I think it might be storage encryption by default that was introduced, that made it a requirement, where modifying/replacing system/bootloader components means it can’t decrypt the data anymore.
actively making their product worse. awesome
I see Google is amply funding their fun-ruiner division.
That’s how the big bucks are made.
Next they’re going to disable support for VPNs other than their own.
Can someone explain it to me the privacy hobbyist? Why is this a concern? What exactly am I missing out on?
IIRC, it was announced at some point that US cell towers were compromised for several years (Salt Typhoon?) and it can’t be confirmed that state actors don’t still functionally own the infrastructure. This matters because the US for some fucking reason won’t let SMS die.
NSA compromised them all decades ago
Part of Salt Typhoon was abusing that access













