True. Being mindful of which brand you buy is becoming ever more important for those of us who are privacy focused.

Volla, Jolla, fairphone, pinephone etc… are good examples of companies that ship phones with native Linux support. You can buy them preloaded, I haven’t heard any ruminations of these bootloaders being locked away, but admittedly don’t know their stances on the subject. Locking down the bootloader to the point where it doesn’t seem worth it seems to be more of a mainstream approach though for sure. (I still remember trying to get lineageOS on my Motorola… Just, wow).