It's also true in many IBM mainframe computers for decades. Usually a lot of hardware is installed but disabled by software, an upgrade by a field technician is just the process of entering a license key. Same for many electronic test instruments, sometimes it's possible to "upgrade" the cheapest 100 MHz oscilloscope in a product line to the most expensive 500 MHz model [0] by an undocumented backdoor, EEPROM hacking, or a keygen. Extra features can also be unlocked. Interestingly, since the manufacturers' revenues come from selling to enterprise users under service contracts, they usually don't care about a hardware hackers or two on the web at all.

[0] Of course it's a possibility that the analog front-end and ADC is still binned for performance or populated with different components, so you need a bit luck here if you want matched performance.