Sim-free iphone? Don't insert an EE sim card | Hacker News Reader

Sim-free iphone? Don't insert an EE sim card

ee.response.lithium.com

15 pointsundecisive12 comments

Someone care to explain what's going on here?

The linked Twitter conversation is probably more informative. https://twitter.com/didlix/status/522086210383405056/photo/1 Looks like EE locked her phone to their carrier when she inserted the SIM into her previously-unlocked phone.

EE's only response is to link to this page http://ee.co.uk/help/getting-started/joining-ee/unlocking-yo... which says that phones cannot be unlocked in less than 6 months.

Hope this isn't true. I"m in the UK for a few weeks and have put an EE sim in my (formerly?) unlocked AT&T iPhone 6.

What's going on, is it appears as though someone is accusing EE of carrier-locking an unlocked iPhone when an EE sim card was put in the phone. If this is the case, I would expect if the UK has customer protection laws, that EE would get a mild slap on the wrist.

Reading further down the Twitter conversation it sounds like if you don't buy your iPhone outright from the Apple Store it'll lock to the first carrier you try to connect it to. The lady on Twitter was pissed because she had a unlocked phone, put an EE pay-as-you-go SIM in it on a 30 day contract, only to find EE had locked her iPhone to EE, and wouldn't unlock for 6 months.

Looks like it's an Apple / iPhone 'feature' [0] so not directly EE's fault or intention. EE's initial response was quite unhelpful though, probably through misunderstanding. After all, who expects an unlocked phone to magically lock itself?

[0] http://selfhelp.carphonewarehouse.com/SelfHelp/request.do?vi...

It looks like car phone warehouse supplied her with a locked phone to EE, and not a unlocked one she thinks they sold her.

Interesting, I've heard of this before with Orange (the parent company of EE). A former colleague had used her sim lock free phone with an Orange SIM, after which the phone would no longer accept non-Orange SIMs. The response from Orange was nearly identical in her case and I don't think she ever got it resolved.

I don't think EE has the ability to carrier lock an unlocked phone. My guess is that she bought an EE locked phone. Maybe the salesman at CPW made a mistake or was running a little scam. If this were generally happening we would have heard about it before now

Why is this even possible, technologically speaking. Why did anyone think that designing a system that gives this kind of control over your phone to your carrier was a good idea. More importantly, why didn't anyone complain?

This may also be a case of buying a product with false advertising or a false understanding.

Apple is 100% in bed with the carriers. "Carrier support" bundles include a lengthy list of lockdown features that Apple develops and supports, including the ability for your carrier to:

- turn off tethering (the OS 'helpfully' will give you the carrier's phone number to call to let tethering-colored bits through and to collect their fee) - neuter FaceTime to only work over wi-fi - prohibit you from editing the APNs in use - force your iPhone to always connect to an arbitrary wi-fi hotspot without prompting - automatically add the carrier's stock ticker to the stock app

Source: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Carrier.plist

Apple has developed these malfeatures and continues to add new ones, showing you who their real customers are. Let's not even get into how screwed up the locking system is (you can never really, permanently, 100% unlock an iPhone.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com