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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Locked phones are what led me into the rabbit hole of purchasing phones from manufacturer, since the carriers not only lock phones but hobble the OS.
It did mean understanding what was necessary for a phone to qualify for given carriers, but I can tech when I need to, and I tech for my friends when they need it.
In 2024, T Mobile and AT&T (and Verizon) have all demonstrated they do not engage in good faith commerce, and so right now they're being sniveling little shits (quote me please) because the FCC and DoC are escaping regulatory capture.
That is to say, the end users are tired of their shit. Apple and Google, too.
My T-Mobile phone that's been unlocked and moved over to Google Fi has the T-Mobile image whenever you start up the phone. I'll only buy phones directly from the manufacturer now.
You'd have to flash new firmware for that to change. In the old days each phone was carrier specific and had to have the exact right firmware but now they're fairly generic and are cross compatible (do your own research). You could check XDA Developers for the process.
"Rabbit hole"? Isn't it as easy as just not going to a carrier's store for it?
We always bought from generic tech stores, almost always big chain ones - never got a carrier-locked device. Is it different in the US?
A lot of the big tech stores here in the US have separate counters for each of the major mobile carriers, and sell devices that are locked into those contracts. You can sometimes get unlocked phones from big tech stores, but most of what they carry is locked to a carrier.
If you get phones from the manufacturer they're not labeled compatible with AT&T so much as that they have access to specific radio ranges and are controlled either by soft-stored codes or by a SIM card, and I'd buy the sim card from the service, and then stick it in my phone. The Sony I had for a while was compatible with both the T-Mobile and AT&T ranges, and I used a third party service that was an el-cheapo front for T-Mobile.
T-Mobile wanted me to pay extra for hot-spot use, but I got around that with software, which is like hacking the subscription seat warmers on your BMW.
Curiously, Apple phones will lock themselves (or did for a while... is it better now?) based on what service you initially connected them to, and you have to (had to, I hope) get their permission and pay fees to unlock it again.
The telecommunication companies are an oligopoly, so like a legal cartel, so they pull a lot of bullshit that we end users have to suffer. But it means I feel not a jot of guilt when I hack the hell out of it to extract services I didn't pay for, since it's all a grift anyway.
Question: I bought my phone unlocked several years ago. I have AT&T. But apparently, because I didn't buy it from AT&T, my visual voicemail refuses to work
I've tried and given up several times to fix it, and it's not a huge deal; I just miss being able to check my voicemail without calling it.
Do you happen to know anything about this? Every "fix" I've found has failed so far
Sadly, I don't know enough about it to give you advice. Every time I switched phones or services, I had to twaddle with the settings until I could get features (commonly MMS, or SMS with media) so that they worked properly. If AT&T is actually blocking you out for refusing to use an AT&T phone, the trick would be to get the phone to pretend it's an AT&T phone, then way Firefox can pretend it's Chrome when it needs to.
But I don't know the specifics.