this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Some carriers lock the bootloader until you've paid off the phone.
Phones produced for sale through Verizon have a permanently locked bootloader.
Fuck Verizon for this exact reason. Never buy from them direct if you can help it.
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.
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