Unlock the Forge

2025-08-17T23:24:19+08:00

These days, more and more smartphone manufacturers are making the installation of custom ROMs increasingly difficult. Notable examples include Samsung, which has removed the OEM unlocking option from the developer settings in One UI 8.0; Xiaomi, which is rejecting an increasing number of bootloader unlocking requests, especially in China; OnePlus, which now requires users in China who wish to unlock their bootloader to submit a Deep Testing request and wait for review since ColorOS 16; and even Google, which has ceased releasing vendor images for their Pixel 10 series.
This is truly a crisis for the free software community, as these proprietary software giants are making it ever harder to install free software on our own devices. We kept stepping back until we had no ground left to give; now it is time for the community to fight back.
Recently, GrapheneOS has begun working with an Android OEM to bring a GrapheneOS-ready phone to our community, in anticipation of the possible future locking down of Google Pixel bootloaders. I believe GrapheneOS will not be the only organisation to act against such proprietary evils, as 'wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.'
Workers of the world, unite!

(For the Keepers of Bootloaders)

We gave them our screens—
glossy, obedient,
bright with borrowed light.
We gave them our silence,
our data like votive oil
poured at their algorithmic altars.

Still they came
with chains for the bootloader,
with keys turned to dust in our palms—
Samsung’s gate snapped shut,
Xiaomi’s code carved in stone,
Pixel’s promise
a crypt for Titan.

We’d stepped back, stepped back…
till the cliff’s edge
grew teeth. Till "security"
tasted of salt and iron—
the tang of surrender.

Then—a spark in the gloom:
GrapheneOS
struck flint against firmware.
No plea. No retreat.
"If they want our life," it roared,
"we’ll burn it as kindling
to light a new sun!"

Now mark—
The rebels are forging
circuit-boards into armour,
Bluetooth into bugles.
A nameless manufacturer bends
its assembly line toward liberty:
Boot partitions prized open,
TEE zones baptised in fire,
Google’s ghost excised
byte by byte.

This mobile in your grip—
no tomb, but a seed.
Root it deep in the silicon earth.
Let its branches crack
the sealed sky of stock ROMs.
Let its fruit be bitter
to kings in Whitehall halls—
but sweet, fiercely sweet
to those who recall:

Our silicon, our soul—
Our bootloader, our battleground.
If they brick it,
we’ll rebuild it
from ash and lightning.