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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.
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.
In this case you decided to rent your phone from the carrier. You pay monthly for it, if you exit early there are fees and they want the phone back or the remainder of the balance on it, right?
Just buy the phone unlocked, or get a contract from someone who doesn't lock it to one network. I get the impression that such options are not widely available in the US, but around here it's common, usually cheaper and I've never bought a SIM locked phone ever.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
US carriers often (usually?) won't let phones from pay-as-you-go or virtual carriers register unless the phones are a year (maybe two) old.
So a newer phone from Total Wireless (a virtual carrier using Verizon's network) can't be registered on Verizon.
The major carriers don't want the cheap, somewhat subsidized phones from these pay-as-you-go services cannibalizing their more expensive authorized phones. (Especially if those phones are from the big carriers' own pay-as-you-go services.)
However, the carriers generally allow unlocked, unaffiliated phones. Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T all allow this. Just buy an unlocked and non-carrier locked phone. It's not that hard. As I posted above (anonymously -- signed in for this post), unlocked and carrier-agnostic phones are readily available on Amazon on other online merchants.
Yeah, with a SIM from 'Free' (a French carrier), I get 25Gb of data a month in the US for... 14€ a month. And it roams with all US carriers, so it's so much better and cheaper than any SIM I could get in the US !!!
Non-Linux Penguins ?