Say Goodbye To Your Custom ROMs As Samsung's One UI 8 Kills Bootloader Unlock

Samsung's new One UI 8 update has quietly disabled the ability to unlock the bootloader on all Galaxy devices globally, ending the custom ROM and kernel era for Android enthusiasts. While most users won't notice, the developer community sees this as a major blow to modding freedom -- one that could potentially raise regulatory concerns within the EU. SamMobile reports: A new report highlights evidence found in the Galaxy S25 One UI 8 beta builds that the bootloader unlock option has been removed. A similar change has also been confirmed on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 which are running stable versions of One UI 8. A deep dive into the stable version's code has also confirmed that regardless of the region, the bootloader unlock option will not be available on devices running One UI 8. The enthusiast community won't like it.

They won't be able to use custom ROMs to update devices when the official software support runs out or use custom kernels to extract more performance. However, with most Samsung phones now offering seven years of Android OS upgrades, one can argue that the utility of this capability is not as significant as it once was.

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