A friendly reminder that isps do NOT care about you or your digital rights. Always best to buy directly from the OEM rather than from the telecommunications (unless you can’t afford it). Do proper research before buying a phone!
A friendly reminder that isps do NOT care about you or your digital rights. Always best to buy directly from the OEM rather than from the telecommunications (unless you can’t afford it). Do proper research before buying a phone!
This is why you never, ever, buy a phone from a carrier
The concept was always bizarre to me. It’s like getting a PC as part of your broadband contract. Speaking of, it would make more sense to get a phone as part of your broadband contract, my phone is 95% an internet device. That it happens to have a SIM card in it is a minor feature.
I seriously wonder how long carriers will keep handing out phone numbers to data-only devices. It has to be a serious cost for them to provision out so many numbers plus it only contributes to the phone number exhaustion problem that happens in many areas codes. For example my work has about 1000 training iPads we’ve shipped out, all with phone numbers local to our main office, purely for the purposes of connecting to mobile data. Any messaging/phone apps the Apple might proload are removed via the MDM so they really never use the phone number for anything. And I imagine the company I work for is not a minority in doing something like that given how cheap iPads are to deploy at scale for anything that just needs to run a web browser and nothing else
That is carrier specific. My carrier will happily sell you a data-only SIM or eSIM, at a discount even.
I’m curious, do they have phone numbers tied to them?
Edit: a quick internet search confirms my suspicion, they do have a number assigned but are unable to make/receive calls or texts
If they have, it’s well hidden. Nowhere on the packaging or Sim tooling does any number appear (I have one for my iPad).
My data SIM has a phone number but Android can’t see it, I have to use USSD code to get my number
Ok. Now how do I unlock my samsung note 20 ultra that isn’t carrier locked?
Assuming that model can be unlocked you’d usually enable developer options in Android settings, toggle the bootloader unlock option there then reboot to the bootloader and finish unlocking (and wiping) the phone.
There’s some Samsung fuckery requiring button presses and/or a cable plugged into the phone at the right time during boot to get into different bootloader modes, the exact buttons and cable plugging sequence vary by model so Google and see if you can find an XDA thread or something.
Oh. I kind of asked ironically. Samsungs phones with Knox have been a huge pita to root and some never really made it at all. If you do get it, then you can’t use things like tap to pay or other security focused things.
There’s an lsposed module that spoofs Knox status now so rooting is more viable: https://xdaforums.com/t/app-xposed-magisk-knoxpatch-v0-6-8-restore-samsung-knox-features.4549179/
I don’t use Samsung tap to pay but I use a couple other features that are gated behind Knox status
Dang. Even that won’t let you use samsung wallet.
I’m hoping that they’ll have something figured out before nothing supports android 13.
Especially US carriers. Elsewhere, it varies.
Expensive, but worth it.
Usually not even that bad, I buy a 1-2y old unlocked phone on fleabay for <= ~$400 when it’s time for an upgrade and I’m set for 3y or so
Last couple of phones I’ve bought have been pixel a-series, new. Only reason I’ve felt I had to upgrade what the phone no longer getting security updates.