The only answer is regulation. We need laws that say, if you own a device, you can do anything you want to it, including wipe it, hack it, resell it, etc.

If they want to control your device, or lease it to you provided you pay a monthly fee, etc, they need to say "Lease", "Rent" or similar, not buy.

And they shouldn't be able to void your warranty for it - voids should be limited to the parts of the device you mess with. Like, if you flash your phone, they should be able to say, we can't give you support, including how to re-install the original OS...but if your battery fails and it shocks you, they should have to replace the battery under a warranty.

We also need laws that say, if you pay for a device, that device itself, can't have ads. So like, when talking about Android TV boxes, they can put recommendations on the homepage, but not ads, and those recommendations can't be paid. Now, if you open youtube, they can make you watch ads.

As long as they don't encounter any resistance, they have no reason to renounce their enshittification process.

Will the sales slow because of this? Unlikely. I would assume the power users are in the noise.

Will they make more money? Probably, either through their own data collection and brokerage, or from third party editors paying to have their app bundled in the OS.

So, no catch! (for them…)

I dont run custom ROMs anymore either but I have needed Odin a few times over the last few years to flash different OEM firmware to devices. Examples are a couple of work phones the company let me keep after upgrading which had Sprint firmware. I was able to flash Tmobile firmware to them while simultaneously removing all the locked-down work stuff that was preventing me from doing anything with the devices like activating developer mode.

As far as my personal device, an S21 Ultra, I'll probably need to upgrade it in the next couple of years and I think its finally time to ditch Samsung. I had similar feelings before getting the S21 but compromised since the market was shit for higher-end devices (I typically get a higher end device and then keep it for years and years) and i have no interest in Apple. It sucks because the market is still weak as hell in the US. Every device I've come across that looks decent is a EU device that doesn't support all of Tmobile's bands.