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The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

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Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#171

Post by r00fus »

csense wrote: post #95

This is a great business model from the standpoint of making profits (less so from the standpoint of ethics or consumer satisfaction). Most people don't travel internationally very frequently, and region locking is not something that's marketed, so they only discover it when they actually travel, and then they're forced to buy another phone! Forget region locking, can't they inflate their profits further at their cus…

Most folks don't buy another phone and the carrier makes a bundle on $2/min calls from the foreign country.

The smarter folks buy a cheap $30 GSM/CDMA phone before the trip, the even smarter ones have a world phone and confirm it's capable of taking foreign sims (though having a fallback $30 GSM phone isn't a bad idea).

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#172

Post by r00fus »

pasbesoin wrote: post #85
GFischer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Samsung printer (ML2165W) has some similar stupidity. I had to flash it to accept a toner bought elsewhere. It caught me off guard, my previous laser printer (also Samsung) happily accepted other cartridges (I would have bought Samsung, but they were out of stock).

Thank you for including the model number. I haven't turned it into a business model nor personal public initiative, yet, but I think we are to the point of needing to name and shame. And then conduct, or withhold, our business accordingly.

The manufacturers are way ahead of us here. Do you know how many model numbers the average printer manufacturer has - sometimes for the same product?

It's a byzantine mess that shifts every week or so. If you can solve this problem, you can also solve the problem of having consistent reviews for products.

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#174

Post by mercurial »

parennoob wrote: post #45

Buy something else. Stat. It doesn't matter even if this is just a sticker put up by some product marketing idiot, it shows that they feel good about imposing these region-specific restrictions in a phone that operates according to a global standard. The nexus devices are generally good about this sort of thing. Most of Samsung's other carrier-partnered phones are loaded with absolute crap anyway, this is another goo…

It shows that they are putting the interests of the carriers way above their customers'. Now, that's a business decision, they have their own priorities, and fiduciary duties to shareholders and all that, good for them. I'll just take my money elsewhere in the future (and I don't even care about being able to switch sim cards, really).

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#175

Post by r00fus »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #108
cbhl wrote: post #8

Different regions have different frequencies, so this might just be a warning that the Note 3 isn't penta-band.

It isn't. The Note 3 has a list of blacklisted cellular operators outside your region, if you try to use a sim card created by one of them you get an error on the screen and it refuses to connect. The leaflet is just a leaflet, the issue here is that Samsung have added software intentionally designed to block cross-region usage.

This just sounds so anti-consumer, I'm surprised. Do you have a citation that identifies the blacklist?

If so, why would Samsung do something so blatantly anti-consumer? They're a major corporation, they don't get jollies off this, where do they profit?

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#176

Post by kriro »

onedognight wrote: post #47
gamblor956 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is not a GS3 problem, it is a carrier problem specific to Vodafone, which had a marketing deal with Pizza Hut at the time of the GS3's release. Other carriers did not forcibly include undeletable Pizza Hut bookmarks.

No. It's a Samsung problem. You don't see crapware on iPhones do you?

Can you delete iOS ;P

I own an S4 and if this policy stays it'll be the last Samsung phone I bought.

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#177

Post by fencepost »

georgeott wrote: post #114
edward wrote: post #14

My HP printer is region-locked. When I moved from Europe to the US it refused to accept ink cartridges bought in the US.

Reminds me of my Brother Printer/Fax/Scanner. Once ANY of the 4 ink carts is empty, you can no longer do ANYTHING. No scanning to a SD card, no outbound faxes, etc, until you replace the ink. Of course, there is a simple "tape over the holes" hack to get around this, but it's still lame.

I haven't looked much at the color ones, but if it's networkable get it on a network and poke around in its web-based management interface. On the mono lasers there's a setting for "Toner out" behavior - the default is "stop" but you can change it to "continue".

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#178

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

r00fus wrote: post #175
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't. The Note 3 has a list of blacklisted cellular operators outside your region, if you try to use a sim card created by one of them you get an error on the screen and it refuses to connect. The leaflet is just a leaflet, the issue here is that Samsung have added software intentionally designed to block cross-region usage.

This just sounds so anti-consumer, I'm surprised. Do you have a citation that identifies the blacklist? If so, why would Samsung do something so blatantly anti-consumer? They're a major corporation, they don't get jollies off this, where do they profit?

XDA extracted and posted the XML file with a list of carriers to block in it.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2457964&pag...

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#179

Post by gonehome »

mahyarm wrote: post #94
gonehome wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETF is $350, new phones are usually $2-300 so the total is $5-650. Not really "quite a bit cheaper".

With the iPhone, the difference is $450, so it's usually cheaper. If you keep it for a while, the ETF goes down.

The ETF goes down, but so does the value of the phone - you're also paying off the difference in price every month.

On Tmobile when you bring your own device you can get a $50 everything plan - the equivalent plan is $100 on competing networks. Granted you could argue this isn't all subsidy and that Tmobile is also cheaper because their network is worse, but when you compare to international cell services this doesn't appear to be the case.

It's at least in part because the companies are near monopolies that don't need to compete (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R4xhwy-1oI).

Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

#180

Post by Samuel_Michon »

gcb0 wrote: post #134
onedognight wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's a Samsung problem. You don't see crapware on iPhones do you?

Yes, i can't move the magazines crap to the 'garbage' folder. Also, i can't use amazon appstore or something like that. app store lock-in is the ultimate bloatware. Only place i really don't see bloatware is on my hacked HP touchpad. My only tablet until a month ago was a 32gb HP touchpad that I got from $199. On day one I installed android on it and helped with some the kernel tweaks. Now i'm just running cyanogenmo…

> i can't move the magazines crap to the 'garbage' folder.

As of iOS 7, you can move the Newsstand rack into a folder.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57602683-285/with-ios-7-...

> Multitask [on iOS on iPad 4] is so crap that, I kid you not, changing tabs in the browser, or going back one page, results in a full redraw of the page, and sometimes a refresh of that page. [...] Changing apps is even worse. Several apps 'restart' when you multitask.

I suspect you haven’t upgraded to iOS 7.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2048935/get-to-know-ios-7-mu...

> Full control over browser. dumb webdeveloper used 8px and limited zoom? no problem, zoom anyway. dumb webdeveloper put in 1024px wide paragraph? no problem, zoom and double tab.

All possible on iOS. In Safari, use Reader or JavaScript bookmarklets. Or use one of the many third party browsers that have web dev tools.

> The latest ipad (apple sucks on that, can't even refer it to a number because i can't see any number on the device case or software... is that an ipad3?)

The latest 10" iPad can be referred to as iPad 4th Generation or iPad Late 2012.

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