why are phones so locked down unlike pcs and laptops?
Because of capitalism & companies that dont want your phone to have a life after use.
That said, some do. Most Motorola devices can have the boot loader unlocked, and all Google Pixel (and nexus) devices can be unlocked.
The next problem is the closed source BLOBS from companies like Qualcomm who make the majority of the ARM cpus in these phones. Even though they are ARM they are not standard enough to run without some propitiatory code that is obscured and encoded into the firmware.
Modern PCs can trace their lineage all the way back to the IBM PC Compatibles. Multiple vendors across the industry consolidated on a set of standards (because IBM basically had a monopoly at one point), and consumers came to expect that these standards would be followed.
When smartphones came on the scene, there was no expectation for them to follow desktop standards. It was the Wild West, and every manufacturer ended up doing things at least a little differently—much like the early PC market, actually. The customer base was the general public, not the hobbyists and tinkerers who bought into the early PC market, and there was no regulatory pressure to adopt open standards. In addition, I don’t think people anticipated the extent to which they would become the dominant form of computing for much of the globe.
Phones have always been locked down, all the way back to when you could only use a phone that AT&T sold you attached to a landline.
Basic cell phones were generally very locked down, or at least there was no documentation on how anything worked. I do remember using a photo and contact syncing tool that had the protocols for a bunch of “feature” phones reverse engineered. IIRC the dev gave up because he kept getting sued because the phone manufacturers and carriers made money off of charging for that.
When smartphones came around, Android was actually very open. My first Droid was completely open, no need to even unlock anything. Applications could be installed and run from anywhere, including the SD card. Custom ROMs were common and easy to install.
But the carriers were not happy, due to the proliferation of malware running on their networks and a general fear of hackers. Plus the “Hey, we want to charge for that like we do on the feature phones!” Back then, the carriers were all powerful because they could and would kick out any device they wanted. Users were also pretty unhappy due to the lack of security and malware. So they started by adding a boot loader lock and eventually locked down more and more.
The iPhone was locked down from the beginning. It was seen as more of an iPod or other accessory device by most people, so no one really cared.
And, that’s basically been it.
Really, the fact that PCs are as open as they are is pretty amazing and mostly due to different companies reverse engineering each other and a lot of court decisions. I’m sure looking back that IBM really wishes that their cases had gone differently.
Having attempted to install Linux on an ARM device I think the real answer boils down to how ARM works. You could have UEFI or a BIOS but more likely the CPU will scan for data at specific offsets toward the beginning of the disk for a bootable kernel.
Android phones don’t have a BIOS for the same reason that Macs don’t have a BIOS and Raspberry Pis don’t have a BIOS — they run on the ARM architecture, not the Intel-compatible PC architecture.
As such, the bootloader system is compliant with a totally different reference system; ARM (Acorn Reference Machine) has been around almost as long as the IBM PC compatible architecture.
As for the “why are phones more locked down” bit, it’s because they’re supposed to be appliances, not general computing platforms. You want your phone to always work, so if you receive a phone call, text or email, it’s likely going to work.
Although the real answer is that if you buy a computer, you own the computer and get to decide what goes on it (well, unless it’s locked down to Windows or macOS). Phones contain bits that are owned by your carrier, bits that are owned by the manufacturer, bits that are owned by the software developer. And each of those groups doesn’t want anyone else messing with their private software.
I personally choose a phone that was easy to unlock and put e/os based on lineage on it. Its degoogled but i am pretty sure that at least the french police can get full access instantly. But at least the phone itself does not spy on me beyond the few unsafe apps i installed because they had no real alternatives
Because phones have the most sensitive data out of all your devices for most people, and they are also the easiest to break, lose, get stolen, or have an unauthorized users access its contents.
Its just to protect the users from themselves and others.
This is at least in large part how the locking down of smartphones began. People either weren’t around yet or don’t remember how much of a wild west smartphones were for malware, scams, etc. when they first reached mass market uptake. There was a while there where companies were blocking smartphones from their networks because of the security risks.
It took Apple and their closely integrated/walled garden approach and insistence to sway the perception. And that’s what other manufacturers then decided to emulate.
Because what are you gonna do? Buy all the individual components and put it together yourself?
Yes. Plenty of us already doing this and things like it.
The closest i can think of to that is buying a bunch of broken shiftphone/fairphone and making a new phone with the working parts.
But its not really choosing the design but instead a type of repair with spare parts.
in that sense other phones can also be repaired this way but they need a lot more skill like ungluing without breaking.
