Huawei may be bricking modded devices in an attempt to kill community development

Back in May, Huawei announced that it would be ending support for bootloader unlocks of all new devices, with already released phones getting a 60-day grace period. That grace period ended over a month ago, on July 24, and the company has, indeed, stopped providing bootloader unlock codes for all its devices. Sadly, that isn’t as far as the company is willing to take things.

According to users on XDA-Developers, a new update to the Huawei P9 has modified bricked devices, although it isn't clear what the prerequisite is. 

This comes after word that the company is set to send out an OTA update that will end Magisk usage on its devices by making them unable to boot up if the systemless root framework is detected.

What makes this all the more frustrating is the fact that, before the turnaround a few months ago, Huawei was one of the more supportive OEMs, in terms of community support. The company was one of the few to implement Project Treble support on its Oreo updates, and its Honor sub-brand contributed to the XDA sphere with the OpenKirin project, even giving out free Honor View 10’s to developers. 

Something must have happened to make the company make a complete U-turn on its policies. Thankfully, that isn’t for us to debate, and users with love for community support may want to patronize other OEMs instead.