Including an easy-to-unlock bootloader is one of the primary ingredients to attract aftermarket development communities to your phones. Google did that wonderfully with the now-defunct Nexus lineup and continues the tradition with Pixels. Oh, and I should obviously mention OnePlus in this regard.
Big players in the market have some weird strategies regarding unlocking the bootloader. Not all Samsung phones can be unlocked, and the supported ones instantaneously become out of warranty after the procedure.
Huawei (and Honor) went one step further and completely shut down the unlocking infrastructure. Xiaomi on the other hand is cool with bootloader unlocking, but you need to go through a tiresome waiting period. Another Chinese OEM is Realme, who started to offer official tools for bootloader unlocking.
Both Realme and OnePlus have their roots in OPPO, but the mother company is surprisingly lagging in this particular domain. The Chinese OEM used to have a special program for developers where they provided methods to unlock the bootloaders, but it was closed down years ago.
The spell was broken with OPPO Find X, the flagship of 2018, as the OEM allowed enthusiastic users to unlock their phones after a mandatory enrolment thingy. The structure of the process is virtually identical to the one orchestrated by Realme.
OPPO Reno phones become the newest members in that team, as the OEM is gradually showing interest towards custom development. They already published kernel source code for the whole Reno lineup, and now this unlockable bootloader may attract more users towards the ‘shark fin’ phone.
There are prerequisites though, like you need to sign in with your OPPO account on the phone for at least 60 days. Moreover, only Chinese carrier unlocked units of OPPO Reno, Reno 10x Zoom are supported at this moment; we can’t find any info regarding Reno 5G and Reno Z compatibility.
The ‘deep test’ app for OPPO Reno series can be downloaded using this link (OPPO account is needed). The company maintains a quota system with a capacity around 15,000 applications per month, so you need to try your luck to get in the list.
1. Download the depth test APK and install it.
2. Login using your OPPO account credentials.
3. Click the ‘Start’ button, and follow the prompts to complete the application process.
4. If the application is successful, you will be greeted to the next phase. The quota is reset after the 15th day of every month.
5. Opt for deep testing. This step will wipe your data and reboot to fastboot/bootloader interface.
6. Use fastboot binary to execute the generic unlock command.
Further details can be obtained from this thread.
FYI, the OPPO Reno lineup is a part of Android Q public beta testing. An unlockable bootloader will surely work as a catalyst to build third party kernels, custom recovery like TWRP and popular aftermarket distributions like LineageOS.
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Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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