I have recently received a Jolla C2 and, like many other people here, was also unable to set it up (almost nothing worked on first boot and the phone did not unlock after rebooting). I was initially planning to send it back, but then decided to check if the phone provides some sort of flashing method. It turns out that the Unisoc flashing mode can be entered by holding the Volume Up button while turning on the phone.
Flashing or dumping partitions using this mode requires two loaders (FDL1 and FDL2), which are usually signed using a device-specific key, but an exploit makes it possible to use generic loaders. Both the exploit code and the loaders are available here: GitHub - TomKing062/CVE-2022-38694_unlock_bootloader: This is a one-time signature verification bypass. For persistent signature verification bypass, check https://github.com/TomKing062/CVE-2022-38691_38692 (see ums9230_universal_unlock.zip
in the releases section).
This makes it possible to dump partitions and even restore bricked/failed devices, although the latter is quite complicated if no factory images are available. I can try to provide some more detailed instructions if anyone is interested, but please be aware that this is very likely to void your warranty and that it is very easy to do something wrong in this process.