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Comment by xevb3k | Hacker News Reader

Curious as to why China would want to block Callkit specifically. Is this just an easy way of saying “actually we don’t want apps with any kind of VOIP functionality and will eventually block you anyway”.

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Yes. Same reason iPhones and iPads sold in China can't make or receive FaceTime Audio(-only) calls, even when used outside China, and even after firmware upgrades etc.

I've never purchased a "new from the Apple Store" iPhone in China. But I've purchased a second-hand/refurbished US model iPhone in country off of Taobao. And you can make/receive FaceTime Audio-only calls with it, in-country.

Yes, iPhones manufactured for countries other than China aren't affected. It's only the ones that are made for China, and distributed through the the apple store or carriers' own stores.

This may be an alternate explanation for what seem to be 3 out of 5 buyers in line at Apple iPhone launch events in NYC area being Chinese nationals with no English?

I assumed they were reselling locally in the NYC grey market electronics shops, but why all Chinese? Taking non-crippled phones back home, or making it easier for tourists to get in these shops, makes sense.

They are simply reselling it for profits. iPhone Trading in Grey Market are billion dollar business, not to mention US tends to get allocated the most iPhone per stores, and are one of the cheapest worldwide.

* The cheapest is actually iPhone in Japan, but due to hardware enabled sound when taking photos as required by law, there aren't any demand for Japanese iPhone.

iPhones are cheaper in the US than in China. But I'm not sure why they would buy them in NYC rather than HK. HK and the US have similar list prices for the iPhone, but HK has no sales tax, and is closer to mainland China.

Didn’t have any problems with the phones I bought in China so far.

Did you buy them from the Apple Store or from one of the mobile carriers? Are they made-for-China models, or models imported from HK/US by non-affiliated resellers? You can tell by looking at the text on the back of the device.

And it's the same for devices sold in Dubai too. They have VoIP mostly blocked.

It forces you to call using the National Network, which are all monitored anyway.

I am surprise iMessages Still works in China though.

Most likely making way for state-sponsored "innovations" (with "completely own intellectual property") to thrive instead.

Thankfully they’re starting to support WebRTC in Safari so secure comms on iPhones in China are still possible.

WebRTC still needs a TURN server when two clients are communicating behind symmetric NAT, which would certainly be the case in China. The TURN server is not responsible for any encryption.

Can't clients do their own encryption though?

Yeah for sure. But it’s not secure by default, and clients still can’t hide the metadata like peer addresses, connection time, bandwidth usage etc.

WebRTC has built in e2e encryption IIRC.

No ipv6 on Chinese carriers?

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