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A comment on When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sells for $385. Parent comment

Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by blharr on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:13PM (#50429258)
Because a smartphone is locked down by default. I'm sure there's lots you can't just easily do with it.

The development experience of something like Android itself seems super unfriendly for beginners (as someone who is admittedly a beginner to it)

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by varispeed on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:18PM (#50429347)
There is a lot of AI-aided effort going on "hacking" the bootloaders. Hopefully someone will figure out how to unlock them.
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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by tete on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:59PM (#50429969)
The Raspberry Pi is also somewhat locked down compared to most competing devices.
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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by lilbigdoot on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:17PM (#50430274)
It's not as locked down as you might think. I was surprised how easy it was to root a couple of devices, one an old pixel and one a pretty new one

It's definitely a bit odd, the Android environment, but I didn't feel blocked on it. Also ended up unrooting one because termux and the built in debian VM on Android now give everything I need

Termux + X11+ XFCE is surprisingly nice on a vanilla phone

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