Would Shizuku be an option for you? That’s privilege elevation similar to root but you don’t need to unlock the bootloader for it. Pro is definitely that banking apps and OTA will still work afterwards. Cons are it’s a bit finicky and apps written for root still won’t work if they don’t explicitly work with Shizuku, too (some of them do). You’ll also be able to uninstall apps for user 0 which aren’t uninstallable otherwise (like gboard on G72, when I had one).