• mememuseum@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Some carriers lock the bootloader until you’ve paid off the phone.

    Phones produced for sale through Verizon have a permanently locked bootloader.

    • Archr@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Fuck Verizon for this exact reason. Never buy from them direct if you can help it.

      • mememuseum@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        Didn’t realize this when switching. Went through a whole kerfuffle to cancel the trade in deal.

        Phone agent sounded perplexed when I wanted to keep my old Pixel 7 Pro lol.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      Why is that?

      Would you be able to change the IMEI as I would have thought those were encoded on the hardware chip. If you could it means they couldn’t blacklist the phone if you stopped paying.

      Paying you can spoof it