It used to be a manufacturer made different actual hardware to produce various models with more or less capability, thereby making market segmentation. Once software-based control systems became sophisticated enough, then they were able to restrict hardware capabilities by not including the control software to make it work. This was the beginning of crippleware. Now, instead of even bothering to produce different software for the different models, they've taken the ultimate lazy-ass and made the crippleware simple toggles they can turn on and off.
There are STILL ongoing litigation that have been fought for decades over whether it is legal to SELL a hardware product yet still hold the software required for that hardware to work as a separate entity that you don't relinquish rights to; in essence SELLING something but STILL demanding that you STILL OWN some part of it. In other parts of the civilized world these arguments have been shut down in favor of the consumer, and it has been decided that you can't do that. SELL means SELL, RENT means RENT. Microsoft has gotten spanked dozens of times by these proceedings, and it is why they're moving to a services-for-hire business model.
The batshit crazy pro-corporation political climate of the US has allowed these battles to continue, and to keep common sense from obtaining scenarios like this. Even the very legality of "break-seal licensing" and "click-through" licensing is still up in the air over here.
That said... given how much real concern these very same Chinese manufacturers have for US Copyright and CopyLeft laws, and knowing that the very code in these machines is probably a mix of both stolen copyrighted code and LINUX, which license expressly requires that all such code modifications, even even that forked to use for profit, much be released back to the open-source source pool, I have very little compunction regards using the digital equivalent of a bent paper clip to "unlock" code that is probably illegally locked away to begin with, and is locked under the equivalent of a novelty pair of fuzzy handcuffs.
Bottom line is if they're too damned lazy to even make different versions of the code, but instead deliver the hardware with ALL the software fully functional on it but deliberately crippled, they DESERVE to have folks unlock their hardware once they take physical possession of it. And they deserve to have folks who know how to code release their "unlocked" source code back to the LINUX code pool, thereby fulfilling the terms of that license as the CopyLeft of that base code explicitly states.
mnem
Food for thought; thought from food.