So, I just learned about this the very, very hard way.
After buying a second hand S10 and finding american ones can't be unlocked, traveling 4 hours to buy another one after much research, much annoyances to unlock it (samsung requires you to be online, which I didn't know) and testing multiple ROMs, I finally read this page more properly https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/beyond1lte/ which says "known quirks: IMS". I thought it was just something like dolby sound.
What it means is that it doesn't suport VoLTE and most currently used phone systems. Samsung made their proprietary mess, unlike most other developers, which means it will probably never have an open source version.
And that applies to ALL modern samsung phones. I had samsung phone before with a custom OS, but didn't realize because VoLTE wasn't mandatory back then. Now it is here in Australia, and many countries. So if you ever plan to buy a samsung phone to degoogle it, know that it won't make phone calls. SMS and mobile data also doesn't work.
I don't know how I missed this. It should be talked more often given how popular samsung is. There should always be a warning "YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE PHONE CALLS IN THE FUTURE IF YOU CONTINUE".
S10 was the last decent phone ever made (for me). Not too big, SD card, headphone jack (one of the most important things for me), good camera, etc, etc... That's why I was so persistent to find one to degoogle.
So I'm stuck with my amazingly shitty pixel 5 (and other ones are even worse for me). And considering the possibility of a life without smartphones at all, since this is a losing battle. Mainstream doesn't care and evil companies have every incentive to kill freedom. It has been getting really bad and it will just get worse. But anyway... this post is not about this.
Be warned, if you care about freedom don't ever buy samsung again. Not because they are evil (they are), but because you won't be able to make phone calls on your "phone".
Thanks! I assume you're in Australia from your instance. I'm in the US. On top of using American companies just being a given here, let's just say the coverage of Snowden in 2013 was inadequate in my circles at the time.
Did they even mention it back then in your country?
If they did, I imagine the news were more in the line of "a traitor just put our whole country in the hands of terrorists, what can YOU do to keep your children safe?"
Here in the united states of the south we get a lot of that. "terrorists in the streets protesting against the poor israelis killing people. is YOUR child safe?". It must be even worse for you.
Although even the rest of the world didn't comment much on that. I was in Brazil back then, and there was really not much on the media, even though there were emails of the president of the time shown to be spied by the US. I thought the whole world would go crazy and quickly everyone forgot.
Hell, not even an orange menace waging war against enemies and allies all the time is enough for people to do something...