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.
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.
Ok. Now how do I unlock my samsung note 20 ultra that isn’t carrier locked?
Also never ever by a Samsung phone. Seriously, you have to check in advance what you can and cannot do with your phone. Stop caring about megapixels, 15 cameras all around the edge of the phone and it being foldable 8 times or more. Then you can also buy phones under $1000. You should try it.
I used to riot every phone I had. I’d install the Cyanogen dailies and loved customizing my phone.
Now I have an $1800 foldable Samsung phone (Fold 3) I bought 3 years ago, and I won’t go back. Yeah, it was super expensive, but why should I spend thousands on my desktop computer I use once or twice a week at most, but then go cheap on the device I keep on hand all day every day?
The biggest reasons to root for years were unlocking things like wifi tethering that are now built into the devices. I haven’t felt the need to root a phone since like 2012. The things I miss about older phones (headphone jack, IR blaster, SD card slot, interchange batteries, etc) are all hardware that can’t be fixed with root, and I wouldn’t trade all those features for the user experience of my Fold.
I can use my outside screen for quick tasks, my inner screen for more intense use, and I can wirelessly connect it into my laptop or desktop and get a full desktop-style interface through Samsung Dex (the least-advertised killer feature of Samsung phones, BTW).
It has enough horsepower to run any app I need. The battery life is mediocre if I use the inside screen a bunch, but that’s to be expected with this size screen.
I’m happy with my Samsung because they make excellent phones. Do I need all these bells and whistles? No. But I like having them and am in a place where I can buy a nice phone every few years.
And, for the first time I’m entirely, 100% satisfied with my phone 3 years into ownership and am not even considering upgrading any time soon. If I make this phone last 5-6 years it’ll average out to being pretty affordable compared to my old phones I’d get for cheap and replace every 2 years.
Biggest issue I’ve had with my s21 is those dumbass childrens games being installed with every update
After a couple years of solid pixel use I just ordered an S24 Ultra. I don’t care about alot of things but I’ve had enough terrible signal, WiFi, Bluetooth and battery life.
My wife bought an S23 Ultra and I had my Pixel 7 pro, we’re both out and about, she’s got full bars 5G, and I’ve barely got any signal. She can leave her phone anywhere in the house and her bluetooth works up to like 60’ away in the right conditions, meanwhile I’m getting half that at most, and there’s a 3 second delay over Bluetooth so watching video is fun. She gets like 2 days of charge out of her phone normally, and with minor use I’m below 40% at the end of the day.
i’ve tried to leave sumsung multiple times; but their phones seems to be one of the few that work seamlessly with wireless android auto while others are buggy at best or just plain don’t work at all.
they say that all android phones past version 11 should work with android auto; but i have a brand new xiaomi’s, huawei’s, oppo’s, one plus’ and nokia’s with android 11 through 14 that don’t work well or at all.
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.
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
