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Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

arstechnica.com

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Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#71

Post by MobiusHorizons »

delfinom wrote: post #37
bandrami wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a no-contract Android phone for like $80

If you take a look at marketshare, Americans are animals that spend well beyond their means in bulk. Apple products or Samsung products dominate the smartphone market and it's the expensive ones.

To be fair I know a nontrivial number of people who bought their iPhones used. I’m sure that happens in the android market, but it doesn’t seem to be as common in the US. I think the fact that iPhones have offered acceptable support for much longer than android has helps a lot there.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#72

Post by m463 »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #66

Why is anyone even tolerating a carrier selling them a phone locked for a single day (unless it is free with plan or something in which case there's nothing wrong)? If you're using an iPhone, buy it from the Apple Store, full stop. No reason not to. If you need financing they have that (ACMI). They also sell older models refurb (like new condition) to save even more. For a cheap Android (Revvl 60 or whatever), they'l…

> Why is anyone even tolerating a carrier selling them a phone locked for a single day

When I graduated from college, a large majority of the recent graduates at my first job had new cars.

I still see this trend - young people with the latest iphone and/or new cars, and not worrying about being tied to payments.

I think this will happen... forever.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#73

Post by 0xC0ncord »

bandrami wrote: post #10

Having lived in a lot of countries over the past couple of decades, I can say this is absolutely something Americans do completely wrong. Just buy your phone at full price. The "free" phones cost significantly more than a full price phone.

Is this an option that's available all the time? Back when the Nexus 5 was still new, I tried doing exactly this and took one I just bought to my local Verizon outlet to have it activated on their network. The tech there told me that while the phone DID have the hardware needed to be compatible on Verizon's network, he was "not allowed" to activate it for me unless I bought it directly through them. I've since switched to T-Mobile and never looked back.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#74

Post by bandrami »

gricardo99 wrote: post #61
bandrami wrote: post #10

Having lived in a lot of countries over the past couple of decades, I can say this is absolutely something Americans do completely wrong. Just buy your phone at full price. The "free" phones cost significantly more than a full price phone.

That’s what I thought and did this for years. However, the major carriers do offer promotions and incentives that make the phones cheaper, sometimes significantly. e.g. of recent deal from major US carriers: iPhone 16 deal for $16/month for 36 months ($576 total) versus Apple store $699.

Right but they're locking you into a contract plan that's much more expensive than you would get with BYOD. They still get the money.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#75

Post by bandrami »

0xC0ncord wrote: post #73
bandrami wrote: post #10

Having lived in a lot of countries over the past couple of decades, I can say this is absolutely something Americans do completely wrong. Just buy your phone at full price. The "free" phones cost significantly more than a full price phone.

Is this an option that's available all the time? Back when the Nexus 5 was still new, I tried doing exactly this and took one I just bought to my local Verizon outlet to have it activated on their network. The tech there told me that while the phone DID have the hardware needed to be compatible on Verizon's network, he was "not allowed" to activate it for me unless I bought it directly through them. I've since switch…

The car salesman will also try to tell you he's not allowed to let you take the vehicle off the lot without rustproofing.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#76

Post by callmeal »

dunder_cat wrote: post #65

I'm glad I stumbled across this: life circumstances have allowed me go abroad for a trip the past two years. One thing I had forgotten about since the last trip were some of my group being unable to get one of the cheap prepaid data eSIMs because their phone was still locked to the carrier. I've been tempted to replace my aging iPhone SE 2022 (^1) with a trade-in deal and get a new phone, but it never occurred to me…

>I wish I wasn't so tempted after ~4 years, but the battery health has dropped to 75% and the performance has suffered dramatically.

Won't help with performance, but I've found that keeping bluetooth and location turned off lets me use the phone for the whole day without needing a recharge. Only thing that eats battery is video calls.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#77

Post by MobiusHorizons »

bandrami wrote: post #64
autoexec wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just depends on who you ask and what they think living paycheck to paycheck means. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/52-americans-live-paycheck-pa... https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/goldman-sachs-study-fin... https://econofact.org/factbrief/is-there-a-consensus-that-a-... No matter if it's "Nearly half" or 60%, things are clearly far from good for most Americans.

Americans are, adjusted for inflation, literally richer than Americans have ever been at any point in history right now, at every quintile in the income distribution. If that's "far from good" I'm not even sure what that phrase means. If the point is just that the hedonic treadmill means Americans will continue to be less and less happy as we get more and more wealthy, well, that's the problem we need to fix.

How is that measured? All the anecdotal evidence I’ve ever seen suggests the number of hours you have to work at realistic (especially entry level) wages to afford rent, basic food, and transit to said job is currently higher than it’s ever been as far as I can tell in my lifetime. Rent alone has risen substantially higher than inflation, which seems like it should especially skew the numbers on the low end.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#78

Post by faust201 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #58
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a lot easier to pay smaller amounts over time than it is to pay a large lump sum, even if it is technically less after x number of years. Delayed gratification etc, but also sometimes folks need a phone and can't put off the purchase until they save up the upfront price. T

You can get usable $150 phones to fulfill a need. Nobody needs a $1000 phone they can't afford.

People often give bs reasons like

- oh. I like night time camera from 1K pixel or iPhone

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#79

Post by MobiusHorizons »

dpark wrote: post #40
paxys wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure about that? Look up Visible, Mint Mobile, Total Wireless, US Mobile, Tello... Same carrier networks, same quality of service. You can even pay a bit extra for prioritized data and other fancy features. You can get basic unlimited plans for $15-30 and premium plans in the $30-50 range vs $100+ at the big carriers. The only difference is that you aren't paying for your "free" phone.

In this case you’ve switched providers, though. Might be a good idea but doesn’t say anything about whether, e.g., ATT will lower your price if you bring your own phone. I’ve read that these virtual networks also get lower prioritization so you can get low bandwidth when the higher tier users are active. Not sure how accurate that is.

That’s the whole point of buying your phone unlocked: to allow competition between carriers. Growing up in Europe we had very cheap prepaid plans but you still paid more for out of network than in-network, so lots of budget conscious people had two or more prepaid sims and swapped between them. No monthly bill and you add money to whichever number is low. It helped that receiving calls or sms was free, so you could ring someone and have them call you back if you were a bit low on funds.

Man thinking back, I probably got away with less than 2 dollars a month back in 2006-2010 era.

Re: Verizon starts requiring 365 days of paid service before it will unlock phones

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

userbinator wrote: post #53
Nextgrid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically phone locking was done at the modem level via an NCK code - if a phone is supplied by a carrier the modem will come pre-locked and will only be unlocked upon entry of an NCK code which the carrier has the secret key to generate (hash(secret+imei)). With this system if the phone is not locked to begin with I am not aware of any way to toggle this mechanism remotely. With smartphones however, the game has…

I am not sure what the Android situation is in comparison. If you have root, you can easily unlock the modem and keep it unlocked.

Now if only we could force companies to allow root [without disabling features].
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