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Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Over the weekend, four commits were posted to various parts of Android's Gerrit source code management, all entitled "Carrier restriction enhancements for Android Q." In them, we see that network carriers will have more fine-grained control over which networks devices will and will not work on. More specifically, it will be possible to designate a list of "allowed" and "excluded" carriers, essentially a whitelist and a blacklist of what will and won't work on a particular phone. This can be done with a fine-grained detail to even allow blocking virtual carrier networks that run on the same towers as your main carrier.
Restriction changes are also on the way for dual-SIM devices. At the moment, carriers can set individual restrictions for each SIM slot, but with Android Q, carriers will be able to lock out the second slot unless there's an approved SIM card in the first slot. This SIM lock restriction is applied immediately and will persist through restarting the phone, and even doing a factory reset. Thankfully, in both cases, emergency phone calls will still work as expected, regardless of any restrictions on the particular SIM cards in your phone.
Restriction changes are also on the way for dual-SIM devices. At the moment, carriers can set individual restrictions for each SIM slot, but with Android Q, carriers will be able to lock out the second slot unless there's an approved SIM card in the first slot. This SIM lock restriction is applied immediately and will persist through restarting the phone, and even doing a factory reset. Thankfully, in both cases, emergency phone calls will still work as expected, regardless of any restrictions on the particular SIM cards in your phone.
wait, I thought open source in general and Android in particular were the bastions of user freedom?
Somewhere in the heart of Android, theres a Linux kernel, still under the GPL, bleeding out for the loss of all it was supposed represent.
"Property" is now "Rent".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
In a boardroom somewhere in Businessland, a flock of executards converse:
Smartphone sales have been down for four straight quarters. What can we do to make people want to buy them even less?
Where I live, simlocking is not allowed. Every phone you buy will be unlocked. Every. Single. One.
There is a difference between your phone and your carrier fees and your phone. So if you buy a plan with a phone, you can drop the plan and use the phone at any other carrier.
You could even put the SIM in your old Nokia phone and not use your new phone, or not use your new plan and use the phone on a pre-paid card, or ...
This all doe snot mean you do not still have to pay your plan and pay a lot of extra fees if you decide to step out early. But that is for the plan, not for the phone.
The country is Belgium. Home of the free sims and beer.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Stop complaining and buy your own phone instead of going into some kind of financing deal with a carrier.
And why is this worth posting? It sounds pretty unimportant
Don't I recall that, in the United States' auction of 700 MHz bandwidth that eventually became LTE, there was a requirement that whoever owns the bandwidth must allow any compatible device to use it? Wouldn't, say, Verizon using these carrier restrictions constitute a breach of contract or, at the least, a breach of faith with those requirements?
Or is my recollection wrong, and what would have been a sound proposal in the initial auction rule-making neutered by lobbying pressure?
Will they be able to do this on phones that are not locked?
Hopefully, this will make buying your own phone as an even safer option to go with the long standing fact that it is cheaper!/p?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Since there is no competition, people won't buy a different Android phone. People who are still renting their phone get what they deserve though.
don't permanently solder the SIM card to the device.
Removable SIM sockets are just one more thing the manufacturer has to pay for and one more reason to let the dirty customers actually remove the backplate and install one or two SIMs. /s
I'm just wondering what desert they're going to name Android Q.
Another example of Google changing their company motto from "Don't Be Evil" to simply "Be Evil".
I'll just re-compile it and upload it my phone.
Buy phone outright.
Refuse to use a carrier that attempts to lock you to their network (anti-competitive practice - they should only be doing it to ensure that you are still paying your debt to them for your financed phone, but even that's dubious).
Anyway, I thought we were all going to have eSIMs soon?
To be honest, at this point, my phone is a tablet on a data connection. I couldn't care less about the telecoms company behind it, and don't use it for classical telephony.
I would actually rather carry around a Wifi-4G (*) box on a month-to-month or PAYG basis and change it if they started messing me about. Then they wouldn't even see my "phone", just a data connection over Wifi / 4G.
But for sure, I've never owned a network-locked phone and don't ever intend to start with one. Buy phone from phone manufacturer via retail website. Buy SIM from a shop on a network of my choice. The second I can't just change that SIM for another, I'll find another way to connect. If that means a mini-Wifi box for each carrier, I'll take that into account as regards paying them money.
(*) I have a little Huawei box. It's the size and shape of a half-used bar of soap. It charges by USB. It works for 8 hours at full whack but can also be constantly plugged in. It offers out a 4G SIM connection over Wifi including NAT, firewall, SIP-NAT, etc. I can slip it in my pocket alongside my phone and, because it has a big data allowance, use all the data on it via my phone without having to even take it out of my pocket.
It travels with me. It's relatively secure (unlike, say, an open Wifi in a pub). It works throughout Europe. I can connect it to a cheap antenna and boost the signal when at home (when it's powered all the time) and the Wifi covers my entire two-storey home.
Friends can press a button and join it via WPS if they like. It can even piggy-back off another Wifi so you don't have to change your network settings once you'd used up all your data.
That's my "connection". Yes, it has a SIM card. Yes, it could be "locked" to the network (it's not - I bought it entirely separately to the multiple SIMs inside it that I switch to if I burn through the data). But it's cheap enough to be throwaway even if they did lock it. One of those and then change the whole thing for another network if they start locking me in and I want to move.
And then they never get on my phone, my phone doesn't even need a SIM inside it, I can use any phone I like, and I've got that barrier between what they are capable of running code on (even via a SIM smartcard) and what they are not.
I'd honestly rather do that - both my phone and that box slip lovely into a single pocket with room to spare and can "charge" off each other's cables - than carry a locked phone.
Hell, I'd carry a USB dongle and you could probably power a USB-4G dongle direct off a phone nowadays (USB-C and all that) and cut out the Wifi and charging portion. New network, new dongle, off you go.
Smithers who is that man?
With more trends to people buying phones outright or using payment plans from the phone manufacturer (Apple for example) why is this even necessary?
I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in my part of the USA, carriers lock the phone for 1 year when you sign up with their service. It's not simply one year, it's one year of PAID service. Even with Straight Talk using the PayGo method on your personally owned phone, you have to pay for 12 months of service before you can go to another carrier.
I love how they were able to auction off thin air.
You have a better solution to the tragedy of the commons?
Been happening for a while now. But go on believing it has anything to do with Trump
Over my DB
But keep sucking that green robot's cock
You're blinded by ignorance.
Go educate yourself on the entire political spectrum with an open mind, then come back and tell is what you've found.
Until that day comes, it would be unwise to express any political opinions you've gotten from your friends or family. Also Freedom would appreciate it if you abstain from voting until you've educated yourself
Thanks!
BOO Fuck GOOGLE and Elon Musk. Elon Musk is evil and needs to go back to Hell.
My carrier will not tell me what to do with my phone. My guess is that custom ROMs agree with me.
He's one of your fork-and-spoon operators from sector 7-G, sir.
Thankfully, in both cases, emergency phone calls will still work as expected, regardless of any restrictions on the particular SIM cards in your phone. In the US, cell phone companies are required by the FCC to connect any 911 call on a phone that connects to its tower. You do not have to have any service, or even a SIM card, as long as your phone can connect. That's why some companies advertise those "911 emergency phones" knowing they must work; and hoping people don't realize any old cell phone will do the same. Got a few years old phone you no longer use? Keep it charged and you have a 911 only phone.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Simpson, eh? New man?
If you want to buy an unlocked phone, you can. If you want to buy a "subsidized" phone that's locked to a carrier, you can. Maybe some people don't care and will happily take the locked phone. It's up to the buyer.
So who cares?
unlocked and carrier-agnostic phones are readily available on Amazon on other online merchants.
How can someone looking to buy a phone from an online merchant get a feel for how the phone will feel in his or her hand?
The advantage of buying a locked phone is that you get to buy a phone in person. In turn, the advantage of buying a phone in person is not having to pay a restocking fee and round-trip shipping cost should you end up deciding that a phone purchased online doesn't suit you.
For taking more control of my device away from me and giving it to the data miners.
Buy phone outright.
Which U.S. electronics showroom chains sell major brand phones outright? Amazon is not a showroom.
Buy phone from phone manufacturer via retail website.
How would someone going this route determine a phone's hand-fit?
Luckily this is illegal for carriers to actually implement in my country one of the few good laws here... That being said you would think that android is in a strong enough position to prevent this sort of thing and tell the carriers to get lost. Instead, they are making it easy.
Device personalization in cellular standards and provide flexibility. Some carriers abuse with restrictions but that is not a device OEM decision.
Yeah, UWB. Too bad if you start using UWB, you have to stop using all other kinds of radio, though.
So A) it's not a solution because it's potentially incompatible and B) it's not a solution because wireless spectrum remains a finite public good no matter how you utilize the spectrum. UWB might make the limited spectrum go further but it doesn't solve the core problem of interference due to unregulated overuse.
... and you only really have permission to pay for it.
I haven't bought a carrier phone since!
You make me roll my eyes in disbelief.
Individuals who are using ATT , Verizon, or Sprint are buying expensive phones they think are subsidized by the carrier (hit you just pay way more on your bill) and than want to move to another carrier.
The answer is don't. Don't even start on any one of them. Excluding some rather specific edge cases, the major carriers are all ripping you off horribly. I just did a quick search and the cheapest plan Verizon is offering is $35/month for 3GB. I am paying $25/month for 10GB. To match my usage I would have to pay $65. What are you fools tossing money away for?
If you choose to run a carrier-provided version of Android, you can live with these restrictions.
If you choose to download and run the open source LineageOS (formerly CyanogenMod) you can live without these restrictions.
This is the power of open source. YOU, the OWNER of the device, can CHOOSE what you like.*
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
One Plus 1 - LineageOS 15
MotoG4 - LineageOS 15
Nexus 7 - LineageOS 15
* You should also choose an unlocked bootloader device so you can run whatever you want on it. You can pay less, of course, but then you get less.
We fought long and hard in Canada to make carrier locking illegal. The past is now an old nightmare.
If your country doesn't outlaw SIM / carrier locking, call your representative and tell them earning your vote depends on them taking action. Make it an important point.
However, a lesser known, but more important issue is actually bootloader locking. Mention this as well, even if it's difficult to explain. Hopefully right-to-repair legislation will be passed in Canada and the US making anti-ownership tactics illegal, but until then, we need to raise awareness.
No root? Device may not be legally sold, imported, or manufactured. We can win this fight!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
there is a low number limit of how many devices can be unlocked per account in a calendar year.
How low is this limit, and does it vary between individual and business account types? Say a business employs a few dozen field technicians, buying a device and service for each technician, and keeps all the receipts. A year later, once the loan is paid off, the business wants to expand its service into an area where the carrier fails to offer satisfactory coverage. Is the limit low enough to keep the business from requesting that all the devices be unlocked then?
It's too bad Linus chose a narrow stance with the kernel. If he'd spent more time thinking about the kernel licensing and looking at the restrictions vendors were putting on it, he could have nipped this in the bud with a GPLv3/AGPLv3 relicense, which would have either resulted in no one developing on Linux, or everyone finally being incentivized to keep their hardware dual-purpose compatible by requiring a secondary signing key for end-user modification.
There's a whole boatload of small Chinese manufacturers, trying to fulfill your every wish, to get big.
People stupidly say MediaTek devices suck... but fact is that they are both more than fast enough today *and* can be flashed, even if they are completely bricked!
On my BV6000, I just flipped a switch in the settings to unlock the bootloader, as per Blackview instructions, and flash whatever the fuck I want.
Oh, and they themselves put a video on YouTube on how to completely disassemble and reassemble the thing! That instantly gets them a lot of credit from me!
You just have to look beyond theain stream players, and you'll find a world of wonderful things you never thought could exist.
"I was only following orders." didn't work at the Nürnberg trials, and it doesn't work now.
If you agree to work for evil, then you have to face the music too.
And "But the others will take the job and do it anyway." is not an excuse either. If others murdered, that does not excuse your murder.
I hardly ever see anyone with anything but a prepaid SIM. And usually the first thing they or somebody else says then, is "Dude, you're paying waay too much. Get a prepaid deal!" or "LOL, he's stupid!".
So what is "Android Q" again? A small appositive or link in the summary would be an obvioys way to handle this question raised by many.
It's MY phone, jerks.
If your world view is that it's OK to be shit to people because there is shit out there then there will always be a lot of shit out there. Instead, you should patiently explain (as to an idiot, if you must) why you are not accepting the corporate shit and then there will at least be some push back against the tidal wave of shit.
These fuckers are the enemy, they take our money to make their networks then exploit and punish us all for money.
They use dirty tactics to hurt the honest carriers.
Please move to a smaller, honest carrier. Vote with your wallet it makes a huge difference.
You realize that Chinese "freedom" phone has hardwired built in backdoor capability for the comrades at Party HQ in Peking? You might be able to deflect Google, but Chairman Zedong knows your every move.
Big Brother Google sure does hate freedom.
Let's everyone say it together now:
Fuck you, Google!
are increasing. Google is becoming an enemy as Microsoft with it's Spy/Adware platform called windows 10. Oh wait, don't forget Onkyo, Samsung (tvs), Roombas (Selling your house layout). Oh Shit, just tech company.
I'm a long-time user of cheap MVNOs (mostly plan-less), but one of the challenges of this is that it seems that these days, the major carriers prioritize their name-brand traffic over other traffic. Thus, depending on the time and place, my data service can be so poor as to be unusable (not just slow -- slow enough that things break), while others using the same towers (but paying the asking price) are fine.
Most of the time it's not that big a deal, because I'm bandwidth-conscious and don't do much that's demanding, but as I prepare for a big trip on which I will need to do *all* my work on the go and be available during the day, this becomes more of a concern to me.
wth does this "cosmonaut" keep cropping up? It's "confidante".