Some unlocked and more open alternatives: Nexus, Firefox OS
The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
181–190 of 233 posts
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly thought this was a troll comment intended to show how ridiculous this sort of thing would be if region locking applied to printers. I was not pleased to find out that this is, actually, a thing.
And circumventing the "technological protection measure" is illegal under §1201 of the DMCA.
Printers aren't copyrighted, and moving a printer is not making a copy.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If one model has consumer-hostile features, simply avoid all models from that manufacturer.
If someone makes a business of hitting me with his Buick, I don't keep their company when they come around in their Oldsmobile.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow I find it hard to interpret an undeletable Pizza Hut bookmark as a sign of a healthy business. It has the familiar smell of desperation to monetize everything. Unless of course Samsung is striving to be known as the Ryanair of consumer electronics.
We blame Samsung. Most users will just deal with it. Few and far between care enough about crapware to abandon a phone manufacturer over it (assuming they even blame Samsung for it at all). Marketing people from major companies use a Samsung phone and sees the bookmark will think "I wish our brand was there. How do we reach out to the carrier or Samsung to put our brand there as well?" a few weeks later in a meeting…
Next step: http://i.imgur.com/Sptabbs.jpg
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
THIS is what I don't understand. Why do people call it "subsidized" when you're locked in to a 2 year contract with an early termination fee. IT IS NOT SUBSIDIZED, PEOPLE. You may say, well I'm paying the same per month whether I take a new phone or not from the carrier, so... it's subsidized right? Nope, they're just gouging you when you're on an old phone. Taking the new phone just slightly reduces your disadvantag…
It's subsidised in that they are fronting you the money. My wife has about £100/month disposable income and pays about £30/month for her handset and contract. When her renewal comes around she can buy the handset for, say £400. Apart from to get that £400 she needs to go without beer and eating out and new shoes for 4 months (never going to happen). Or make do with less for, say, a year (very unlikely given she doesn…
In my experience, people like that aren't interested in getting a brand new phone every 24 months like HN users are. For someone like that, it makes much more sense financially to buy a phone outright, since they are unlikely to take full advantage of the subsidy.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I do, it just comes from Apple themselves. There are several icons you can't get rid of on the iphone for apple products and services.
I hope you're trolling or joking. Comparing a Pizza Hut bookmark with iOS built-in apps, just wow. I mean, I knew Apple haters were dense but this is excessive.
Newsstand is spam if you want nothing to do with it. It is an imposition upon the device I own. With Android, I can disable any app I want, even built-in ones (for example, Samsung includes a bookmark provider that adds Samsung bookmarks, which I don't want).
Here's a thought: when all you can do is rail against the "haters", you are in a bad state of mind.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you're trolling or joking. Comparing a Pizza Hut bookmark with iOS built-in apps, just wow. I mean, I knew Apple haters were dense but this is excessive.
Newsstand is spam if you want nothing to do with it. It is an imposition upon the device I own. With Android, I can disable any app I want, even built-in ones (for example, Samsung includes a bookmark provider that adds Samsung bookmarks, which I don't want). Here's a thought: when all you can do is rail against the "haters", you are in a bad state of mind.
Is the phone app spam if I want nothing to do with it? The music app if I don't listen to music? Get real. There's a difference between Newsstand, which exists because it's very common for touch-device users to consolidate their reading subscriptions (as there is one for music and videos), and bloatware, which third parties pay companies to add to the OS and which detract from the experience.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#188This 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).
> having a fallback $30 GSM phone isn't a bad idea
Especially if you need to use SMS two-factor authentication on your normal home number. Trying to make a bank transfer when the code is sent to SIM A and the data plan is on SIM B is otherwise an interesting challenge. (That's the voice of experience.)
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#189Haven't seen this mentioned. The phones are region locked only until activated with a SIM from that Region. This way phones have to be used in there home market. I suppose this is for controlling exports from UK or South America to US.
A side... Sprint Iphones SIM SLOT are technically unlockable by Sprint but only to regions/carriers not the US.
Re: The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If one model has consumer-hostile features, simply avoid all models from that manufacturer. If someone makes a business of hitting me with his Buick, I don't keep their company when they come around in their Oldsmobile.
The logical solution is to fall into the arms of Apple or their equivalent in a given industry.
In many areas, Apple doesn't exist (even with a different name). Worse, sometimes they exist, but only for a brief time as the company strip-mines the goodwill that a given product has to extract more profits and then fall back to "industry rest-state".
Customer preference to control manufacturers' behavior is a model that rarely works.