EU carriers and locked bootloaders. (Bouygues,France)

Trena

Hello! Does anyone have any experience with (the admittedly bad practice) of getting a pixel monthly from a carrier in the EU?

Specifically, Bouygues.fr in France.

If I buy a pixel 8 on a monthly contract, will the bootloader be unlocked?

Asking them is a futile exercise. They have no clue what I’m on about.

[deleted]

Trena Hi I'm French, the French operator doesn't lock the bootloader

[deleted]

Trena Don't mind updating it when you receive it. When I received mine the bootloader button was grayed out because I hadn't done the updates.

treequell

Trena You should be able to install GrapheneOS on that phone fine. In Europe it's usually fine to buy phones directly from a carrier on a contract; it's phones from the USA where users have to be more careful.

And as a side note of clarification: new phones are always sold with a locked bootloader. The web installer for GrapheneOS will unlock the bootloader, flash GrapheneOS, and relock the bootloader for you during the installation process. In order to unlock the bootloader, you'll need to enable OEM unlocking first in stock Pixel OS. This requires an internet connection. This is all outlined for you in the web installer on the GrapheneOS website: https://grapheneos.org/install/web.

Trena

[deleted] thanks for your input. So what you’re saying is that it’s fine so long as I update the phone when I receive it?

[deleted]

Trena Yes, it needs to be updated right away. Then you do what you need to do to install GOS or not. Be careful if you use passkey with Google, GOS is not certified so it won't work.

Trena

[deleted] Thanks. Coming from iOS, never used any Android before and I’m Google free. Use passkeys with my Keepass vault (I use Strongbox on iOS), but if it doesn’t work it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have any logins where I only use a passkey, they all have regular password fall backs.

p338k

Trena

Note that KeepassDX and Keepass2Android have passkey support planned. I think they are waiting for the KeepassXC implementation to finalize/become more mature.

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Simyo at Spain, owned by Orange, dont lock the bootloader