Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets
nomadscrolls.net
nomadscrolls.net
Generally, I've shopped carefully and looked for compatibility listings to decide whether my chosen model would work with that particular ISP. You are right, with cable modems I've had to put my customized router behind it. But I purchased both the router and modem from independent sellers, not from the ISP.
I even took one modem from one ISP to another with a house move. I struggled until I factory-reset it once. It seems the first ISP had pushed some kind of update for their network that made it incompatible with the second ISP, but after a full reset the second ISP was able to configure service. They never came on site, I just called them and provided the DOCSIS equivalent of a MAC address so they could remotely provision it.
I should probably buy a router and put it between the ISP equipment and my stuff.
I mean really almost everyone, starting from apple and to gods-forgotten B-brands. Maybe some really really small ones are excluded since they don't have much resources, and pure AOSP which is rare thing to have preinstalled
Apple hasn't, to my knowledge, remotely disabled a phone like this. They do make it difficult to wipe a device locked by its user. But that's quite different from the mothership smoking it.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210515
they can also brick stolen phones https://www.ubergizmo.com/2020/06/apple-brick-track-looted-i...
For example, to make it completely worthless to thieves.
Also, the manufacturer can let people sell the device and still maintain the ability to brick it if the owner reports it stolen.
"You'll own nothing and be happy"
That doesn't require the manufacturer to maintain any control of the device at all, it just requires the owner to keep the unlock key in a different place than the device.
Somehow iPhones are still stolen every day.
It's all just a play, manufacturers don't give a rats ass about thieves, they want to prevent a third market because it hurts their imaginary revenue.
Imagine going on holidays to Mexico and your phone stops working because some smartass at Samsung is pushing for price discrimination.
Also your phone don’t just drop dead once you enter Mexico, you’d have to activate the phone with a non-native samsung account for the block to kick in. My Germany created Samsung account still works on my German Samsung phone despite having living in Asia.
We're not.
You're asking how is backdoor access to other people's devices different from charging different prices? Are you perhaps confusing the goal (maximize profits through market segmentation) with the method (break into other people's property using a backdoor of your making, and sabotage that property)?
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
There are plenty of forums for normies to hang out and not be bothered by us hackers geeking out over tech.
Toys are fun, no matter one's age.
Beyond that I mainly see HN get excited about attempts to make smartphones less bloated and locked down, like Linux smartphones, LineageOS, etc.
There are two aspects in play:
* the possibilities and potential of these devices, as platforms to run applications,
* the platform itself, which includes stuff such as what hardware it packs, what OS it runs, how the software is maintained, etc.
You can make the same blend of mindless contrarian comment regarding Raspberry Pis, and you would also be completely missing the point.
Are you referring to the baked in default APN's for different MCC/MNC combinations? Yeah those were/are quite annoying to have around if they were out of date. (I think there might be auto-update of these now, but that obviously requires a network connection)
Or are you referring to actual radio config partitions on the flash? (Where one was able in the past on many models, flip bits in order to activate different cell bands)
The former being janky and security risk, the latter being somewhat illegal.
I don't understand what you had an issue with here? Legally it's completely in the clear (see first sale doctrine) and morally I'm not sure how it's any different than, say, the startups making IBM compatibles back in the 80's.
Why? Do you consider contempt of business model to be immoral? Or are you saying the phones were stolen and not just gray-market?
Paraguay is about 20% more, Argentina 100 to 200%, and Brazil 30 to 40% more.
Anything that is high end costs much more here due to a combination of tarrifs, reduced volume and the people who are wealthy not caring.
Read up on Ciduad Del Este, it’s basically the electronics hub for the southern cone where electronics are smuggled into Brazil and Argentina. Beef and eggs from Argentina get smuggled into Brazil and PY.
Anything that you were doing pales in comparison to what everyone here is doing.
It should be illegal to impose such terms on anyone who purchases anything from you.
Freeing those phones was a virtuous act, even if done for self interested reasons.
I'm talking from a corporation/carrier side that let this happen to consumers. If you sign to terms of a contract that gives you special access to phones to sell in your region and then you just go and break that contract that doesn't seem right to me. To be clear I don't think downstream consumers did something wrong.
Sounds like you did god's work.
Edit: Specifically Zenfone 10. Top of the line SoC, 4300mAh battery, only 5.9", apparently good camera set up, and on and on. I don't know anything about the software though.
It is extremely unlikely that you actually voided a warranty by installing different software unless that software somehow causes physical damage (overheating?).
At least in the U.S. anyway.
Main reasons I picked it were because it didn't have a camera notch, it has a headphone jack, and it has an SD card slot, all while being good enough power/performance-wise and without costing a fortune. Got it to replace my PinePhone which, sadly, is just not quite "there" as far as software support and other issues go.
Oh? Did they turn the bootloader unlock servers back on recently?
I was surprised with that kind of control from Samsung. In the end it feels that device is not really yours.
I wonder if other brands do something like that.
> Motorola and Samsung, the main culprits, had to cease their actions immediately and issued statements agreeing to cooperate with the Mexican government to find a solution.
But at the very least, the article doesn't say they agreed to never do it again anywhere in the world.
The sad thing is that its guaranteed that they will do it again.
Could it be that there is a particularly dumb law in Mexico which makes companies do this?
> According to Mexico's Federal Consumer Protection Agency (PROFECO), Samsung smartphones acquired through the gray market pose a risk of suboptimal device performance. Moreover, it could also expose consumers to incompatibility with Mexico’s mobile networks, limit technical support accessibility and inadequate cybersecurity controls within the device, among others.
looool at this bullshit. Carriers can block incompatible phones, and most Samsungs are locked up tight bootloader/firmware-wise so that bit about security is a joke.
> Since the acquisition of technological devices through the gray market is not explicitly prohibited by Mexican law, multiple technological companies have urged the country to propose legislation aimed at preventing and prosecuting the sale of unofficially distributed devices. However, only eight days after going into effect, the PROFECO and the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) in Mexico petitioned Samsung to cease blocking smartphones purchased by unofficial channels, arguing that the measure applied by the South Korean company affected Mexican consumers' rights.
From reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/16pgliq/samsung_bl...
Numerous people saying the prices from the official distributor are incredibly expensive. This is true in a lot of smaller countries - one distributor has official distributorship and somehow it becomes the government's place to help them protect their monopoly on distribution.
In EU you can buy from a variety of sellers at various prices. You can buy grey market too and Samsung doesn't disable those phones.
So what is special about Mexico?
If I recall, they still (to my dismay) permanently blow KNOX e-fuses when the bootloader is unlocked, which permanently breaks quite a few features in the phone, even when bootloader is re-locked. (The health app, secure folder, some other things.)
Yes, carriers can still quite easily block incompatible hardware just by looking at the IMEI TAC when the phone tries to connect.
I suppose an even more insidious way of doing this would be Samsung forcing carriers to block certain ranges from connecting to their networks, as part of their support contract.
Pakistan's solution was to force telecom operators to stop providing service to any phones which were not registered with the government. The phone is not disabled, just not provided any service within Pakistan. There is a grace period of three months from the first time a cell phone connects to any tower within Pakistan. This is sufficient for most vacation goers.
The whole thing is super obscene, because the amount of duty on the phones is extremely high. I think for flagship phones something like 60-70% of the dollar price.
As "scientists" loved to say during the pandemic, this is equilivalent of herd immunity for iphone users. thieves would know they are worthless when marked as stolen.
Now how would this be balanced with aritificial "geofencing" like samsung is trying to do here and right to repair?
To make the parts checks mandatory would require controlling every device the part could be installed in, even when that device isn't stolen and the check is being performed against the will of the legitimate owner of that device. If you wanted to implement that scheme, having the government keep the root keys for every device for this purpose would reduce the number of parties with access to them and prevent their use for this kind of region locking.
Whereas with the system you propose, both the manufacturer and the government (every government where the manufacturer operates) can remotely control the device. Because a government can coerce the manufacturer, including to do what they want without telling anyone, or just send their intelligence service into the corporation to compromise their systems without the company even knowing.
So the scheme you prefer is actually inferior to the sort of remote government backdoors that are occasionally proposed and then condemned because of the catastrophic systemic risk they imply. For a small incremental benefit over honest carriers and buyers consenting to the automatic checks of their own volition.
Some things aren't worth the trade off.
> These devices are not stolen but are originally intended for other regions.
The law cant even stop you from reverse engineering it or making a copy. It only stops you from distributing a copy.
IP law is only meant to setup an artificial monopoly and then only for a set amount of time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/16pgliq/samsung_bl...
Grey market refers to third parties buying a good in country A to resell in country B. As long as they pay the import levies the good is 100% legal.
Manufacturers (phones, cameras, books) hate this because they want to charge some markets more than others. Book publishers, in particular, tried to use the courts to ban this as a violation of copyright only to get laughed out of court because the seller loses all rights towards an item when it is sold
Ultimately it is free market capitalism in reverse. Which is ironic, of course, because your phone manufacturer would have an aneurism if their ability to use cheap foreign slave labor were curtailed
Where exactly does the "reverse" come in?
In this specific case, Samsung has a local distributor in Mexico that upcharges significantly, so Mexicans just buy phones in the US and use them in Mexico. The local distributor hates this because they have no margin if they can't gouge Mexico, so they are trying to scare anyone using a US phone in Mexico so that they can sell you a new distributor-bullshit-royalty-bearing phone instead.
A potential scenario where bulk orders of region-activation-locked phones could end up in the wrong region is theft.
If the customers don't like broken phones, they should sue the person who sold the phones instead of complaining to the manufacturer to disable anti-theft mechanisms.
I'm not sure if region-activation-locking as a concept is unethical. I definitely think that for-profit arbitrage on region-activation-locked devices sold in improper regions should be banned though.
If I buy a good, I should not be able to sell it when/where I see fit?
"In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. "
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."
How is "If I buy a good, I should not be able to sell it when/where I see fit? " implied by either of those things?
> he says that a market is free if buyers and sellers can pursue their own self-interest
> For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.[2] They say this implies that economic rents, which they describe as profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition.
No, not if you are exporting e-waste for-profit.
All phones are e-waste in the long run. What matters is whether any of their useful life is still in the future or if it's all in the past.
The government prohibiting certain types of sale contacts is the opposite of free market capitalism.
Here's a case starting back in the 90s, over Levis jeans, and imports from a lower cost region. This is somewhat parallel to phone imports from a lower cost region:
https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/tesco-loses-levi-...
Of course, this was about weakening brand perception, as consumer sale price was deemed part of the brand, aka the mark of their trade, trademark.
Thus, it was about the price being lower. In the case discussed in thread, consumers aren't saving on phone cost, retailers are.
But the hook is in, with repect to brand control as a viable limiter on imports and sale, so they could argue grey market phones might hurt the brand, as they've been modified or some such, prior to sale.
I bought my entire family new phones for Christmas, directly from the Samsung website. Except that there are 5 of us, and Samsung has a limit of 4. So I searched and searched to find a fifth phone of the same model at a comparable price through legitimate channels. And guess what, the phone I'm typing this on was purchased from a perfectly legitimate seller, but was intended for use in Mexico. Selling phones from one region to alleviate supply shortages in another is incredibly common.
If the seller did not inform you of the region activation lock, then they are illegitimate. That is not normal behavior from a legitimate seller.
if you buy a phone and use it till it dies, as we should, your phone shouldn't really be "resellable".
And shutting down stolen phones automatically is good for third world countries where owning anything remotely good means you are a target for criminals.
Am I right in assuming you're a regular buyer of Apple devices?
Why should we do this, exactly? Someone should use it until it dies, but that person shouldn't necessarily be the first owner. Why can I not use the secondary market to both subsidise my upgrades & provide someone with an opportunity to buy a second-hand phone at a discount?
These days there are four different combinations of frequency models out there for each version.
https://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/cellular/
e.g. On the iPhone 14/15 (pro/plus), only US models have: n258 (26 GHz) n260 (39 GHz) n261 (28 GHz) while rest of world models do not have those.
Then just 6 non-US countries have 1500MHz in LTE, but all 15s support it over 5G and satellite. On 14s, 1500MHz has less support.
It's getting like the bad ole days: "oh you need a quad-band phone if you're going from US to Europe or vice versa".
Probably none of this matters unless you're in a fringe area.
I wish they did. I know the networks don't use it but this way they never will. Chicken & Egg...
So... networks are deployed, and handsets are deployed, but mmWave network deployment is always going to be sparse and in places with lots of handsets, they don't all need to be on mmWave, those that are free up other spectrum for other phones, so everyone gets improved service.
[1] https://www.rcrwireless.com/20231019/venues/verizon-mmwave-n...
[2] https://about.att.com/innovationblog/2021/c-band-5G.html
(maybe the answer is europeans go to watch the game...)
I found it interesting that Puerto Rico gets the iphones with mmWave, but USVI and Guam don't.
Also noticed that nonUS/CAN phones don't support 600mhz, and that can make a difference when you have lots of obstructions (e.g. forest/concrete) if you're missing that in US/CAN. Your next available frequency will likely be be 850mhz - doesn't penetrate as well, and could have more traffic/noise on it.
Very interesting for USVI and Guam. I agree 600 mhz seems like a band you want to have... May as well after all the pain to over the air tv broadcasting it caused to get that spectrum. Unfortunately spectrum allocation seems to be in small chunks here and there with little coordination between regulators and then you end up with what we've got: any given handset can't reasonably work on all the bands, so a maker has to pick the bands based on the probable place of use (and sometimes the network, too)
I understand but obviously those on mmWave are getting a really great performance as this is the one area where 5G really provides a major improvement (due to the massive available bandwidth at those frequencies).
What bothers me is that as a European I pay the same for my flagship phone (sometimes even more as Samsung offers high discounts in the US in an attempt to take marketshare from Apple - here in Europe they are already #1) but I miss out on this feature. And often others as well, most of the time European Samsung phones get the far inferior Exynos chipsets whereas US phones get Snapdragon. Especially in heat and battery life these are a great improvement.
And it's not just Samsung. Apple does the same, which means there is almost no incentive for providers to ever start deploying mmWave in these busy areas.