ASUS is reportedly telling customers they can no longer unlock the bootloader on their phones, including the Zenfone 9 and Zenfone 10.
Update from Asus
The service team reply misunderstood the situation. Unlock tool is unavailable at this moment but we are allowing the possibility to unlock, please stay tuned.
**TL;DR
ASUS has apparently withdrawn the ability to unlock the bootloader on its phones.
As per the company’s technical support team, Zenfone 10 and Zenfone 9 users won’t be able to root their phones.
Why do so many phone manufacturers hate letting you unlock their bootloaders? Every Google phone lets you do this, and they probably have the most secure Androids of them all.
Some people need/want root for something be it customization or tinkering with advanved configurations or whatever. Root can be selectively allowed only for select applications.
What Asus broke here was the bootloader unlocking. Without that, there's no custom ROMs or root. Root and bootloader unlocking mean different things.
Regarding root being a terrible security risk or not, I guess it will depend on the user? I never had any issues and only see it as one more thing that isn't as safe as it could be... my bootloader is unlocked, the recovery isn't stock, I'm running a custom ROM so I have to trust the developers/building process, etc.