Technology

Which is why I've been buying nothing except OEM unlocked devices since 2016 I Payful price for them, but I don't have to worry about leaving my carrier Whenever I want and I don't have to be on extremely expensive cell phone plans either. There is nobody else in my entire life that pays less for cell phone service than I do and I only know one person who pays the exact same and that's because we are on the same plan on our own accounts. Literally, everybody I know in my life pays about four times what I do for cell phone service.

As an American, can I have some of that freedom?

I know lots of Americans who buy their phones without those stupid contracts. It's not uncommon at all. I have never have a phone on a contract.

Sprint would have failed without the merger and we would have had three carriers anyway so it doesn't matter whether they merged or not and in fact it's probably better that they did because it caused T-Mobile's service to improve dramatically since then. I knew friends who had T-Mobile back in 2012 and it was a joke. I had T-Mobile in 2016 and it was only okay.

Not always true, I bought a smart talk phone for my kid and the phone was paid in full at the time of purchase. It's still carrier locked 5 years later because they say "it wasn't in service for x amount of time and therefore isn't eligible". I even reported this to the FCC, opened a case, and they did fuckall and closed the report.

The merger is still something that I'm 50/50 on because it made T-Mobile's service so much more reliable, and iirc Sprint was genuinely struggling.

It still sucks that Boost isn't going anywhere

I wonder what the percentage is these days. Almost everyone I know bought their phone outright.

In Canada even if you lease to own a phone it's not carrier locked anymore, you have to pay the remaining balance if you leave, or possibly can return the phone (but that's just throwing your money away)

I remember during COVID, trying to reduce my bills. Called my mobile operator. For £200 fee I could buy out early, and pay £15 per month. Or I could continue paying something ridiculous like £60 per month.
Absolute no-brainer, and I would never get a contract phone again.

Pretty sure Samsung does it to appease carriers since they sell unlocked snapdragon variants elsewhere

If you buy a phone from Verizon its perma locked for no reason

For quite a long time now, it's been the case that if your vendor makes this hard as is, a carrier on top of that will make it considerably worse. As an example, take a look at older Samsung devices, that all needed special-tailored roms for each carrier variant

With removable batteries is that there is actually a legitimate reason for getting rid of them, in that it's much harder to waterproof a device with a removable battery.

I'd still like to see the option available, but I can at least understand why it's not from a practical standpoint. The only reason carrier locks exist is to increase the cost of change for the end user, making them less likely to switch providers.

Not any more, since the Supreme Court just overturned Chevron. Now the FCC (and every other federal organization) can only do what's explicitly described in law.