It saddens me to see people pay a lot of money for a device just to fight the manufacturer tooth and nail for every update and extra functionality.
As for the carriers who lock these phones, it's as if your bank wouldn't let you put holes in the walls until you finished paying off the mortgage. All this does is frustrate customers who paid for that device and who are anyway locked into a contract. Pointless anyway, since it was always possible to pay a guy $20 to unlock any available model out there.
I'd like to see device manufacturers and carriers focusing on their core business (better hardware/software/service) instead of how to cripple more features to squeeze a few extra dollars today.
Even more importantly, I'd like to see people grow a spine and just say no to buying devices if what they intend to do with them is prohibited by the manufacturer. Do that for a while and you'll see them start sweating and advertising their new open product.
"it's as if your bank wouldn't let you put holes in the walls until you finished paying off the mortgage."
Well, don't they? My mortgage has a section about needing permission to do renovations. I do not know how things are in the USA, but given that one, in some states, can walk away from a property without repercussion, I would be surprised if things were different. Would be a nice way to increase the price of one's house: buy a house in a different neighborhood, burn it down, turn in the keys.
Back to the subject: with iPhones, the argument that locking takes away functionality is less strong than for other phones. You will get updates.
> Do that for a while and you'll see them start sweating
> and advertising their new open product.
No, you won't see that. They won't even notice. One of the mobile providers in my country currently runs an ad with a text like "Turns out 60% of smartphones are not so smart after all"—by that they mean, that those who bought smartphones don't even know how to configure them. Provider thus offers to help with setting up email, facebook, etc.
My point is: majority of the users are not even going to use everyting that manufacturer intended to be used on the device.
> It saddens me to see people pay a lot of money for a device just to fight the manufacturer tooth and nail for every update and extra functionality.
I thought this post was about iOS, not Android. Ba-doom-ting!
But seriously, I've unlocked and jailbroke several iOS devices so that relatives could use them in China and it is a pain. The easiest was using the 'slide to unlock' pdf hack via a web site a few years back. I've never done it on a device I intended to use over here (meaning 'the west') because the value to me isn't there compared to regular free and easy OS updates.
This is a neat hack - basically, Apple's SIM activation server doesn't validate that the ICCID sent to it matches the asserted carrier - only that the carrier matches the phone identification and that the phone isn't blacklisted.
The SAM tool lets you fool iOS into sending a valid carrier to the activation server, and the activation server happily sends back the material necessary for the OS to associate the baseband with the SIM.
To make things even better, the material sent back from Apple's servers isn't time-sensitive and hence the attack can be replayed forever - once you have the "baseband ticket" for a given phone and SIM, it can be unlocked forever across all current known versions.
Title is somewhat misleading, as this requires "any jailbroken iOS device", which at this point doesn't cover all/models firmware revisions - specifically, iOS 5.1 on A5 and A5X powered units:
^^ this is exactly why the carrier lock is bullshit. Then again, most carriers will give you unlock info if you're headed overseas and have been with them more than a few months.
Not AT&T, unfortunately. They're just starting to unlock at end of contract, but as far as I can tell won't unlock for overseas travel. And AT&T has sold most international-cable phones in the US, by far.
It's also illegal in most first-world countries and (recent versions) depend on calling emergency services every boot, so definitely not always an (or the best) option.
Older versions required calling emergency services, newer versions do not.
And they aren't illegal -- many first world countries require that phone companies unlock your phone if you request it, and of those that don't, I don't know of any where the hardware is illegal. They are openly sold in stores in the USA, which I think is one of the most restrictive countries about such things. Calling emergency services for non-emergency purposes is not usually legal, but that doesn't seem to be what you are saying.
Faking IMEI/IMSI/etc numbers is illegal in most places, though, and a number of the (I believe the Gevey in particular, at least one model of it) does that.
The way you phrased it makes it sound like the illegality is something beyond the fact that it calls emergency services. Is that the case, and if so, what makes it illegal?
I'm not an expert, but I know some of them faked IMEI/IMSI/some acronym numbers to pretend to be from the official carrier for the iPhone. IIRC, that is also illegal (as is the emergency services call in the newer ones).
As for the carriers who lock these phones, it's as if your bank wouldn't let you put holes in the walls until you finished paying off the mortgage. All this does is frustrate customers who paid for that device and who are anyway locked into a contract. Pointless anyway, since it was always possible to pay a guy $20 to unlock any available model out there.
I'd like to see device manufacturers and carriers focusing on their core business (better hardware/software/service) instead of how to cripple more features to squeeze a few extra dollars today.
Even more importantly, I'd like to see people grow a spine and just say no to buying devices if what they intend to do with them is prohibited by the manufacturer. Do that for a while and you'll see them start sweating and advertising their new open product.