Background
Apparently, I have bought yet another brand new phone that is absolutely useless and has a value of zero.
It is a Google Pixel 2. I would like to OEM unlock it. This option is greyed out in settings -> system -> dev.options. Therefore neither bootloader nor recovery (nor anything else that would be in any way useful) are available. I can also not flash LineageOS and am stuck with what the ****** have provided for me in their boundless wisdom and unending benevolence.
It appears this is the case for many Google Pixel phones, see here, here, and here. It appears that some companies like Verizon routinely sell phones that are crippled in this way.
I understand that I have most likely wasted another bunch of money on this and will not be able to use this phone with Lineage. (And therefore I am not going to use it at all.)
Question
However, before I throw it away, I'd like to make sure that there is absolutely no way to get around the OEM lock and that I understand why. How can I do this?
- Is there a way to verify positively that this phone cannot be OEM unlocked?
- Is there a way to verify that it's perhaps one of the infamous Verizon ones that I didn't know about before I got this?
- Is there another way to try to unlock this besides in the settings (see above) or via fastboot oem unlock?
Software
... is Android 10 from 2019, apparently. I know that this is old, but I do not care what software it has when I run it over with a steamroller. Build number is something like QP**.******.004
Additional Information
Some people reported that factory resets work to enable the OEM unlock option. Factory reset (System -> Reser options -> Erase all data (factory reset)) changes nothing for me. This is unsurprising, since it was new.
Some people report that some Google Pixel Phones somehow come from Verizon (see here, here, and here); Verizon locks them and refuses to help unlocking them. Therefore, Google Pixel phones from Verizon seem to be unlockable (and as far as I am concerned unusable). I have not bought the phone from Verizon (at least not directly), I have never interacted with Verizon in any way (at least not directly), and I do not live in the US. I am therefore unsure this is actually a Verizon phone. Google's trademark obscurity, however, makes this very hard to know.
The greyed out OEM unlock option says "Connect to the internet or contact your carrier". This is a wrong and highly misleading error mesage. I assume this is a practical joke on the part of the ******* from Google. I am connected to the internet via Wifi and I do not have a carrier because I have not even a SIM in this device.
The first time the device is connected to the internet after each factory reset, I can actually switch the "OEM unlock" option. However, it doesn't actually unlock anything, it just pretends it does. After switching to fastboot mode, the device is still locked.
$ fastboot getvar unlocked unlocked: no $ fastboot getvar all ... (bootloader) unlocked:no ... $ fastboot oem device-info (bootloader) Verity mode: true (bootloader) Device unlocked: false (bootloader) Device critical unlocked: true ...There is also no integrity warning when the device reboots, and while the "OEM unlocking" switch can be switched (leading to the apparently usual confirmation dialogues), it always says "Allow the Bootloader to be Unlocked", while it should apparently say "bootloader is already unlocked". Once I have actually tried to go into fastboot mode and do anything and then boot back into the "normal" Android ("normal" in quotation marks, cause this is about as normal as Kim Jong Un's Red Star OS), the option is greyed out again, not available any more, and says I should connect to the internet even though I am connected.
Of course:
FAILED (remote: 'Flashing Unlock is not allowed ') fastboot: error: Command failed(Yh, some programmer at Google or Verizon or whereever was too lazy to fix the newline in this stupid error message.)
Why would anyone end up in such a stupid situation, buying phones they cannot possibly use?
Well, I'd like LineageOS. Lineageos.org has a list of devices Lineage should work with, including Google Pixel 2. Unfortunately, for most of those, there are multiple versions. On many of these, in turn, you can, in fact, not install or run Lineage for various reasons. And as far as I can tell, it will be 100% impossible for you to know which one you get before you actually have it an try it directly. So we're stuck with wasting money.
get_unlock_abilitysetting. So would this answer my question as follows: No, it is impossible to know a phone is OEM-unlockable (cause Google wants it that way), but almost all Google Pixel devices (both those from Verizon, those from EE, and all those refurbished by Google) are, in fact, not unlockable?