Is this a common "dark-pattern" these days, to require "activation" for an Android phone? My last experience with a generic Chinese Android smartphone of close to a decade ago was basically "insert battery, SIMs, microSD, and turn on" whereupon it booted quickly to the generic Android "desktop" and was ready to use with no other steps required.
I say this because you can also buy modified devices, for instances Chinese devices that have been reflashed with an international ROM. If it booted without a wizard, you probably had one of these devices. Xiaomi always hated this, I'm not sure why, though a benign explanation is that sometimes these devices are said to come with malware pre-installed, and that's not a good look for Xiaomi (who like all Android manufacturers wants an exclusive right to install their own malware). This is one of the reasons unlocking the bootloader is rate limited and comes with a wait time.
China is wild.
Isn't this what American mobile operators do?
i think you can unlock one phone per month per registered phone number.
this is done expressly with the intent to prevent mass unlocking by 3rd party resellers.
I stopped buying SAMSUNG after that experience.
First was a DJI drone (this was a few years ago so might be different now). In order to even boot it up you have to download and run their firmware installer on a desktop computer (requiring internet access and potentially gathering God-knows-what data) with the drone plugged in. Then to use the drone you have to install their app which demands access to all sorts of things only tangentially related to the main function of the drone.
Second was a wifi security camera. I'd expect a wifi camera setup to go "turn on, connect to camera's access point, configure via web interface, reboot camera". This one was "install app, grant app all permissions, create account on company web page, verify email address, use account to log in to app, point phone camera at QR code on security camera, app autoconfigures camera with your wifi password, all video+audio goes to their servers, you may access it via (and ONLY via) their phone app."
We did NOT keep that camera much less buy any more of them.
Then again, perhaps avoiding the bigger companies and going to the OEMs or other small manufacturers directly (who would specialise only in hardware, and essentially wouldn't have the resources to set up and maintain the server side, or even an app) might be a better choice.
It does not feel like MY device at all.
These locks have started to become less and less common these days though.
My S105G is a carrier device (Telstra), but as you say they're moving to not lock them down anymore which is a lot nicer experience.