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Comment by globile | Hacker News Reader

Phone unlocking doesn't get much attention, but it is an integral part that no one wants to address or get their hands dirty with.

There are many more locked phones in drawers or acting as mere paperweights than people actually care to disclose.

Several years back we ran a poll to understand lifetime recycling habits. People aren't proud of dropping a phone and shattering the screen, but they are less proud of having thrown a phone into a drawer because they couldn't be bothered to run the obstacle course set up by their telco to keep them in check.

Phone right-to-repair should be EXPLICITLY INCLUSIVE of unlocking, otherwise it is only solving a part of the problem.

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Carrier locks are an absolute scam. The argument is that it allows carriers to offer subsidised phones and “repossess” them if the customer defaults on their bill by making it unusable.

However, in reality, not only does the carrier not mind if the phone keeps being used (as long as it’s on the carrier’s network) but the lock doesn’t expire once the customer pays off their plan.

Furthermore the process for unlocking a phone is intentionally made convoluted. Until recently, you couldn’t even figure out which carrier an Apple device was locked to without playing brute-force with all the carrier’s SIMs in the entire world and even Apple support couldn’t be of any help. And when you finally figure out which carrier it is, getting in touch with them is a pain and some have stupid policies like keeping the device on their network for 30 days before being able to request an unlock (a scummy attempt at getting some people to give up and just keep using their network past the deadline, or revenge against someone who doesn’t intend to do so by essentially making their device unusable for 30 days).

Absolutely. Remember the "2014 Obama Unlocking Law" [1] ? It was supposed to not only not make it ilegal to carrier unlock a phone, but also forced all carriers to adopt a specific code of conduct to assist users with unlocking.

Fast forward 6 years, and it is much harder to unlock a phone than it was then. The whole thing backfired for consumers. It was actually easier to unlock a phone in a "non-legal" way before the law than it was right after.

This whole new code of conduct for carriers actually made them convert their SIMlock departments to be more like a customer retention lifecycle.

This mainly applies to US carriers (in the US and Latam), and there certainly are exceptions in Europe where EVERY cell phone is unlocked from day one, regardless of your contractual status.

[1]: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/08/15/heres-h...

> This mainly applies to US carriers (in the US and Latam), and there certainly are exceptions in Europe where EVERY cell phone is unlocked from day one, regardless of your contractual status.

I had no idea this was still a thing, it’s horrible. What mechanism is creating the current situation? Phones are all unlocked here in New Zealand.

> What mechanism is creating the current situation?

Lack of general consumer protection regulation (or their enforcement), and specifically with regards to telecommunications the regulator who's supposed to oversee the field (the FCC in the US, or OFCOM in the UK for example) is often in bed with the companies it's supposed to regulate.

> Phones are all unlocked here in New Zealand.

Really? I'm surprised because I'm in AU and there are certainly phones locked to a specific carrier. What about $10 burner phones?

> However, in reality, not only does the carrier not mind if the phone keeps being used (as long as it’s on the carrier’s network) but the lock doesn’t expire once the customer pays off their plan.

I recently paid off my AT&T iPhone X and the process to unlock it couldn't have been easier.

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/

That's if you meet the terms and conditions:

https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1262649

Notably, you have to have been paid up (somewhat understandable), active for 60 days if postpaid (not really reasonable at all), or if prepaid, active for 6 months (absolutely not reasonable). This basically precludes someone selling a phone secondhand entirely if they haven't unlocked it first by holding the value of the phone hostage (phones are worth less when locked). Completely anti-consumer. And AT&T isn't even the worst about this. I once tried to unlock a phone through Rogers and they wanted $120 to do it! This was back around 2011 so their policy might have changed but given Canada's terrible telco situation I doubt it has changed much.

> “repossess” them if the customer defaults

It's not usually like that - and I've had a few locked phones.

Usually the deal is that a network, say Vodafone, subsidises the handset by £50 of some such in return for you being forced to use Vodafone services for a couple of years, unless you arrange to unlock it.

It's sort of ok as a deal but a pain in many ways if you want to travel and use a local SIM or sell the phone for example.

Selling locked phones in the UK and EU is already illegal

UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54692179

EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_Commercial_Practices_Di...

SIM/operator locks have been already rare (in Europe) for a while, and that's great!

But there are Android phones that come with bootloader/OS lock, which often means old device is stuck with some ancient OS version (and some bundled bloatware), instead of being able to be reflashed to a recent LineageOS.

Even LineageOS can only help so far. I've got a Galaxy S7 Edge, bought it dec. 2016. It's not even supported by Lineage OS any more.

You should switch to the official OS then - it just got an update. As it also did 3, 6 and 12 months ago.

What are you talking about? The last update for the "official" OS was for Android 8.0. That was two years ago.

Mine got OS update just this week. Not sure what the Android version is though, it's now my girlfriend's phone. It did the OS reinstall screen.

Are you talking about quarterly security patches...?

Xiaomi's phones are locked like this, requiring a mi account to unlock the device to allow flashing thé device...

The new phone lock du jour is the manufacturer's anti theft mechanism.

I recently got two iphones from their owners, pulled out of the drawer to monetize them on classifieds. Both locked and unresettable without the previous owners help (one could be unlocked because I got her account password over the phone, huge nogo but she trusts me to not screw with her account). The other not, account was lost.

Apple also now tags and ties both battery and camera to the logicboard. Shame.

This one is a pretty obvious trade off, does anyone know of good data on the impact of Apples policy on iphone theft rates and/or sales rate of stolen phones?

You can't find a Macbook in any second hand store around Prague. It used to be full of them.

I live in the EU and have never encountered a carrier locked phone. It's quite an amusing concept, and the first carrier to come up with it must truly have been evil.

I live in the EU too (France), and any phone you buy directly from a carrier (generally heavily discounted, but tied to a more expensive plan) is carrier-locked, and can only be unlocked after a set amount of time has passed, or earlier by paying a fee (regulated by the EU if my memory serves me well).

Perhaps it's because I was less financially literate in the past, but I remember that as being the only way in the 2000s. There might have been laws passed to limit that practice and its abuses.

The smart solution, provided you have enough money, is to buy the phone elsewhere, and take a plan without a phone. It's always less expensive in the long term.

Hmm,

in Germany, the Telco's gave up locking the phones in 2017. Because it was to expensive. I can not remember if it was a hard lock - as in any other sim card is blocked or just their additions to the OS. bought a phone in 2017/early 2018 - Xperia 10, where on the boot screen a Deutsche Telekom logo appears but otherwise the OS unaffected by vendor edits/additions. But updates are really slow since they go through Telekom instead of directly from sony which is already slow.

Interesting. More specifically, I live in the Netherlands. Perhaps we already had regulation about this, or I've just been lucky.

I live in the EU and I've avoided carrier locked phone for my entire life.

I know many who can't do math and paid twice the value of the phone for a locked device and some plan they never really used fully.

My recollection is that 10-15yrs ago (in FR/DE/UK) it was cheaper to get a phone on a contract than buying it outright and finding a cheaper plan.

That has not been the case for a long time. The last phone I had on contract was an iPhone 4.

Isn't it about trade-offs? As long as my carrier provides my family with free iPhones, I will bear the inconvenience of requesting device unlock every few years. It takes 2 minutes to unlock it. If I am to pay full price for the device I will not get a locked one.

Funny. As I remember from the times of early GSM, that carrier lock was the default, because subsidized by them in exchange for long term contracts like 2 years. Otherwise you had to pay much more intitially, but it could make sense to calculate this, instead of blindly trusting the advertisements.

/me mumbles something about "Kids these days..."

Mobiles in Europe are generally unlockable by calling the network supplier after the contract expires. In Norway, in my experience at least, this is free.

But the reason I have a handful of paperweight mobiles is not that they are locked but that they are no longer useful. They have low resolution cameras, little memory, small screens, obsolete operating systems, etc. I sometimes try to sell them but no one wants them even free.

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