Over the weekend, four commits were posted to various parts of Android’s Gerrit source code management, all entitled “Carrier restriction enhancements for Android Q.” In them, we see that network carriers will have more fine-grained control over which networks devices will and will not work on.
More specifically, it will be possible to designate a list of “allowed” and “excluded” carriers, essentially a whitelist and a blacklist of what will and won’t work on a particular phone. This can be done with a fine-grained detail to even allow blocking virtual carrier networks that run on the same towers as your main carrier.
I’m sure carriers won’t abuse this functionality at all.
Thom Holwerda,
Yeah, this is clearly not a user driven feature. It’s an anti-feature.
I tried clicking on the “bug” link on google’s repository but their link is broken so I don’t know how to get more info about the ticket.
I looked up Michele Berionne (the person listed as the owner for the merges) and it looks like he was working for qualcom and was hired by google only 5 months ago. Several SIM patents came up under his name as well.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheleberionne
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/michele-berionne
I wonder if his changes were motivated by his work at qualcom.
It seems to me that carriers have been becoming more permissive w/r SIM locking, at least here in the US, especially since they’ve changed the way you pay for you phone (A separate financing charge).
They all will unlock when the phone is paid off, many will unlock before it’s paid off, and most or all sell phones in their branded stores that aren’t even carrier locked.
Drumhellar,
I believe that’s thanks to the FCC passing unlocking guidelines some years back.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/cell-phone-unlocking-faqs
I’ve stopped buying phones from carriers, so it doesn’t matter, but Tmobile phones are still locked.
https://www.t-mobile.com/responsibility/consumer-info/policies/sim-unlock-policy
It appears verizon has significantly relaxed locking.
https://www.verizon.com/about/consumer-safety/device-unlocking-policy
ATT’s policy was a 404 page
This poor guy couldn’t unlock his tmobile phone overseas just a couple of weeks ago.
https://support.t-mobile.com/thread/149486
Incidentally tmobile’s support wasn’t the greatest when I’ve needed support in the past. They try to force you to use facebook or twitter for tech support (what the hell for?). A lot of us were having a problem with SMS blocking. I hate spam as much as anyone, but Tmobile’s blacklisting was making SMS messages to my phone unreliable on their service. They never did fix that and they ended up censoring the discussion with disgruntled customers
At the time tmobile was cheap, which was probably the biggest selling point, but I’m curious if anyone has alternate carrier recommendations for the US?
> At the time tmobile was cheap, which was probably the biggest selling point, but I’m curious if anyone has alternate carrier recommendations for the US?
As much as people bash on Google, I’ve had very good results with Project Fi (well, now Google Fi, but you get the idea). Ironically, it runs partially on TMobile’s network (as well as Sprint and US Cellular). Pricing is decent, service is reasonably good, only downside is that they need special hardware support (but more and more new phones have said support).
I agree with @alfman this is a feature aimed at carries rather than end users.
It’s possible this is a result of the EU’s anti-competition judgement forcing Google to provide Android as a paid OS without its bundled services, and which arguably shifts the balance of power slightly towards the manufacturer and carriers and away from end-users (since now carriers may choose to pay for the OS with money, rather than end-users paying for it with data)..
On the other hand, it’s also quite possible the feature just floated to the top of the developer’s task list, and has nothing to do with this!
In Brazil, I think that there will be no carrier locks due to a cultural change we had.
About 10 years ago, carrier locked phones were a thing. And they were significantly cheaper than unlocked ones.
At that time, Brazil Telecom(now OI) made a TV advertising called “Quem ama bloqueia”(Who loves, locks), where people sing a stick-in-you-mind song about how you should love your locked phone and your carrier while advertising that OI would not commercialize locked phones anymore. That was a big hit and all carriers started slowly to sell unlocked phones only.
Today, it’s pretty difficult to find a carrier that locks SIMs. They create loyalty plans an all that stuff to suck more money of you if you try to switch carriers, but you can still use SIMs of all carriers without problems, or a second SIM if you want it.
I hope this carrier lock “shiture”(not feature) does not come back again here…
SIM locks make “subsidizes” happen. Because carriers don’t want you to run away with the phone they paid for (in whole or in great part). So as long as people want their phone to be “subsidized” we are going to have them.
I don’t buy subsidized phones and never had to deal with locks, except one case.
As long as they can be removed (I once bought an HTC One Max which was a Vodafone exclusive in the UK and had to unlock it) it’s good.
BTW in most countries which have subsidises and no SIM locks you have to let carriers in your credit card, but US credit cards are given out so easily this would never work in the US.
Subsidies don’t have to mean locking the phone; as long as there are ways (and there are in most/all of civilised world) to enforce written & signed deals…
Carriers prefer to have that extra assurance than having to chase people.
Well, not necesarilly – at least at my place and many others, they never required a credit card.
I am sure that carriers cannot put locks where none exist. If you don’t want a carrier locked phone, don’t choose one. Buy the phone from a third party and take a sim-only contract with the carrier.
> At the time tmobile was cheap, which was probably the >biggest selling point, but I’m curious if anyone has >alternate carrier recommendations for the US?
For the best all-around service in the US, Tracfone is the way to go if your primary use of your phone *IS* a phone for calls and sms texting, and your’re not really interested in using it as some silly gaming or internet device.
Silly? I guess having accurate navigation and transit information, and books, and news and music in your pocket all in one device is “silly”. Now excuse me while I get out of your lawn.
One more reason to avoid Android devices. Though, I wonder if it’s a matter of time before Apple phones are subject to this restriction as well. The “Apple SIM” was a joke and never came through on its promise, this would be another step in the wrong direction.
Too late. See E-sim in the latest iPhone XS/XR.
Lol. Apple phones came in SIM-locked variants from the days of the first iPhone, and in the US you had a choice of exactly one carrier.
If you don’t want SIM locks, buy your phone from retail.
Apple were hardly the only ones to make sim-locked phones. Nokia, Motorola, HTC… they all did that. What’s different about E-sim and this latest crap in Android is that it allows the carrier to choose how the phone is locked, even if you buy one unlocked at retail. This is a completely different ballgame. It’s one thing to buy your phone from, say, AT&T and know you’re sim locked to AT&T. It’s quite another to buy your phone at retail, activate with AT&T, and discover later that your unlocked phone is now locked.
darknexus,
Yeah, the details aren’t clear, but the comments make it seem like a trojan horse feature to help malicious carriers screw over phone owners.
https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/hardware/interfaces/+/879012/2/radio/1.4/IRadio.hal
On a different note. Phones are supposed to allow emergency calls no matter what, even without logging in. But does anyone know how that works when emergency numbers vary internationally (ie 911, 999, 01189998819991197253, etc)? I assume the sim card tells the phone (rather than hardcoding in the phone), but what if I take my US sim phone (911) to a country where the emergency number is 999. What number should I dial for emergency? The phone may not recognize the local emergency numbers (of which there are many around the world including some separate ones for police&ambulance&fire), but if I dial an emergency number that’s recognized by the phone/sim card (ie 911), then it may not be recognized by the local carriers. So I don’t understand how the emergency exception works in these cases.
This says 112 is actually defined as the emergency number in the GSM standard, which I did not know. So I guess 112 might work even in cases where the correct local emergency number is blocked by the phone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_number)
112 works even when no SIM card is present in the phone (odd that you didn’t know about 112, it’s at this point the worldwide emergency number, anywhere you are; “legacy” numbers (like 999/998/997 for ambulance/fire/police) often just redirect to 112 call center)
zima,
I doubt many americans know that number. 911 is the official emergency number of all of north america (canada, usa, mexico). My kids learn about 911 in school. I know other places had different emergency numbers obviously, but I had no idea that 112 was supposed to mean anything outside of europe.
I’m not finding anything authoritative, but I’ve read multiple places that 112 may or may not work in the US, it depends on the carrier.
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-112-emergency-number-work-in-the-USA
http://archive.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/authorities-warn-against-dialing-112-for-emergencies-0h8vucj-194260201.html
Unfortunately it would be somewhat unethical for me to test this.
My VOIP provider supports 911, but searching their knowledge base for 112 comes up blank, which makes me skeptical that it would route properly.
https://www.vitelity.com/e911/