753
Looking at you Verizon
(lemmy.world)
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!
Buy a phone not tied to a carrier
Easy if you have money. If a new phone is a financial stretch, then in the short term it can be cheaper to get a nice phone for "free" with carrier lock in (which of course means it wasn't free at all). It probably ends up being more expensive in the long term, but your paycheck can cover it.
You can actually get financing directly from Google who make the Pixel line of phones themselves, with bootloader unlocked as an option. So there is absolutely zero reason to buy from a carrier like Verizon unless they have a really fantastic promotion happening.
It is cheaper because you are the product. Maybe find something used.
brand new androids with the latest version go for about $150 ($90 with android 13 from last year); with them costing the same as 2 to 5 months of a carrier plan in the united states, it's hard to imagine them being a financial stretch
That does not mean you will be able to unlock the boot loader. Unlocked carrier doesn't mean unlockecable boot loader. A lot of manufactures don't give you access to unlock it. US variants of Samsung phones are one example.
https://xdaforums.com/t/is-there-literally-no-way-to-unlock-the-bootloader-on-the-us-edition.4613667/
And on many phones, even if you can unlock the boot loader, there is a big chance that you will not have support by any major roms. There are only a handful of phone manufacturers that have easily unlockable boot loaders and are well supported by roms. Google, OnePlus, Motorola, and Huawei are the major ones that have good support because they make the boot loader unlocking easy.
I agree but you can always just not buy as Samsung as those devices are trash anyway.
You obviously didn't understand this as you were talking about carrier locks and not boot loader locks.
Rather: only buy phones with explicit vendor guarantee that the bootloader can be unlocked / comes unlocked.