Google's latest smartphones offer better cameras, improved fingerprint sensors, more RAM, and other hardware upgrades compared to their previous generations, but the main selling point of the new Pixel 9 series of phones is their new AI features.
But now that the phones have started shipping, some users are finding that unlocking the phone's bootloader stops some of its AI features from working.
The new Pixel Screenshot The feature lets you capture screenshots, analyze them with Google's on-device AI “Gemini Nano,” store them in a searchable index, and then ask Google for information about what you saved days, weeks, or months ago. If your bootloader is unlocked, it doesn't work at all. It doesn't matter if you've rooted the phone or not. If your bootloader is unlocked, the app won't be able to get past the screen that says it's trying to download a model.
Other affected apps mentioned in the xda-developers forum thread include: AI Weather Forecast, Call notes (Text summary of phone conversation) Pixel StudioA new image generation app.
Some people Some These apps now work on unlocked and rooted devices using the latest Canary version of Magisk with some additional modules, although so far it seems Pixel Screenshots only works on devices with a locked bootloader.
It's possible that users will find more workarounds in the future, but this is the latest in a growing list of examples showing that while Android may have an open-source core, many of the apps and features that ship with most Android phones are proprietary, closed-source solutions that may not necessarily play nicely with devices that have an unlocked or rooted bootloader. And that's at least as true for Google Pixel phones as it is for other phones.
To be fair, unlocking your phone's bootloader does make it slightly more vulnerable to certain security threats, but it also allows you to flash custom recovery tools that you can use to back up and restore your device, install software that changes the way your device works in ways that aren't normally supported, and basically gives you more control over your device.
But such control increasingly requires giving up access to some of the functionality available on unrooted devices with locked bootloaders.
Via 9to5Google