Potentially no manufacturers warranty if they aren't an authorized seller.
If you buy it directly from Google it'll be unlocked.
"will remain unlocked unless I factory reset it"
I'd stay away from anything like that, it's unnecessary.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
22 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35870 readers
1055 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
For me the advantage of buying an unlocked phone from the phone manufacturer is avoiding the bloatware from the carrier.
That's not what OP is doing.
He's buy a "brand new" phone the store opened and unlocked.
Completely different, and if a store is doing that, they're probably doing other shady adjacent shit.
I wouldn't buy any "brand new" expensive electronic that's already been opened and had shit done to it
I buy all of my phones carrier-unlocked, and have never had a problem.
Potential pitfalls are if the IMEI is blacklisted, which could happen if the phone is reported as stolen, or if the radio deck isn't compatible with your carrier's network.
In the US, the AT&T and T-Mobile networks are pretty open, and you just need to pop in your SIM card. I don't have experience with Verizon to know if you can bring your own device or not, but I imagine as long as the phone can work with Verizon then its probably just a matter of visiting a store to have it activated.
TMobile is pretty open, but AT&T a lot less so (though still more permissive than Verizon).
Basically any capable phone will be accepted on TMob, but AT&T will refuse to allow "unsupported" devices even if they are compatible. They shut out my OnePlus 3 which was working perfectly fine with VoLTE and VoWiFi for being too old despite being on a recent Lineage build. So instead of getting a new device, I switched to T-Mobile lol.
That's good to know. I've pretty much always been a TMO customer aside from a couple of years when I was with Cingular around the time of their buyout. They were pretty open back then.
I have Verizon, and you can absolutely give them your own device, you don't have to buy from them. You just have to make sure the phone supports their proprietary network protocol, which is why Verizon usually has their own version of devices compatible with their network.
DO NOT BUY FROM VERIZON if you want to unlock your bootloader. This also applies to Rogers in Canada and EE in the UK. They will force your bootloader to be locked for life, creating more e-waste. This sounds sketchy, needing to keep a phone on the same Android install to be unlocked. I would not advise you to buy this device, because I've never heard of this phenomenon. I can't say for sure, but it sounds like the seller may have installed malicious apps that will be removed if the device is factory reset, so the sellers wants you to not reset it in order to keep the malicious app on the system. This is just a guess, and this could be a new scummy thing created by carriers to keep their customers attached to them.
You can "unlock" a locked phone.
You can buy a factory unlocked phone.
I wouldn't buy a "brand new" manually unlocked phone.
You're also going to spend a lot of money at once, where a provider would do interest free over two years plus likely a discount, and your not leaving till the contract is over.
I always take interest free deals, and so should you.
If it's stolen, that's a downside. If it was actually carrier unlocked versus some guy did it and said it was, could you trust they didn't put anything else on the phone? How is the sellers reputation?
Are we sure a software update won't lock you out of your own phone? Seems sus to me. I recommend Swappa, I quit doing phone agreements and just buy "like new" now.