Not in my experience, but again that was quite some time ago - I think it was Android 6 the last time I did it.
ETA: although now that I think about it, it was technically done in an “unsafe” manner by exploiting vulnerabilities. For the more safety-concerned, maybe a wipe was preferred.
Typically unlocking the bootloader requires a full wipe. It’s a security method intended to keep an attacker from compromising your OS to access your data if the phone is stolen.
I’ve never rooted a phone without requiring a wipe, but I’ve owned mostly Samsung
Even old Samsung phones would let you root and flash custom roms without wiping, the bootloader was open from the factory and you could just override your recovery and system partition with Odin. That’s how I did it with my Galaxy Gio during the Android 2.2 days
Not in my experience, but again that was quite some time ago - I think it was Android 6 the last time I did it.
ETA: although now that I think about it, it was technically done in an “unsafe” manner by exploiting vulnerabilities. For the more safety-concerned, maybe a wipe was preferred.
Typically unlocking the bootloader requires a full wipe. It’s a security method intended to keep an attacker from compromising your OS to access your data if the phone is stolen.
I’ve never rooted a phone without requiring a wipe, but I’ve owned mostly Samsung
Even old Samsung phones would let you root and flash custom roms without wiping, the bootloader was open from the factory and you could just override your recovery and system partition with Odin. That’s how I did it with my Galaxy Gio during the Android 2.2 days
I’ve owned pixels and Nexus and you could unlock without wipe. Locking required a wipe. Now both do not sure when it changed though.