Over here, you just buy the phone wherever and put in your carrier’s SIM. There’s no setup as such other than associating the phone with your Google account and re-importing your texts and photos and such (which is pretty seamless with recent versions of Android and fairly simple even before then as long as you prepare your old phone beforehand). Carrier subsidies have pretty much gone away , so it’s cheaper in the long run as well as better for the user.
Huh. Well, good to know. My HTC One M8 is still working, but I loathe the camera in it and the fact that it sucks for actually making calls. Other than that it’s a very solid phone. My wife’s Samsung Edge 7 is fabulous, but with all the issues Samsung is having with their phones I get a bit skeptical of paying that much for one. Other good non-Apple phones with great cameras and good sound quality for calls?
Because one model of Galaxy had issues doesn’t taint all the Samsung phones, IMO.
That being said, if you want a great phone at less than Pixel / Samsung prices, I’d consider the previous Nexus gen (5x, 6p) or the OnePlus 3. They don’t quite have the polish of an iPhone, but they are all great phones which you can get unlocked at very reasonable prices. With the Nexus phones, you’ll also get security upgrades immediately.
As pointed out above, there is really nothing to activating an unlocked phone. Pop in your SIM and sign in to your Google account. To me, this is a much better deal than being locked in a contract and paying my provider for the phone over 2 years. But it might be that “SIM only” contracts are better value in UK. I don’t know how they compare in the US.
Wendelius
Thanks for the info!
The new Axon looks pretty sweet from ZTE.
I’d try getting another S7. Surely you can’t continually get unlucky. Unless your local area received some kind of massive damaged shipment or something. In which case, is it possible to get an S7 by mail from somewhere else, for the same price?
[quote=“mono, post:375, topic:77963, full:true”]
If you get an upgrade incentive, and don’t care about the bootloader, as most don’t, it’s not particularly crazy. [/quote]
Do upgrade incentives still exist in 2016? I thought everybody makes you buy the phone now, for an un-subsidized price. They just spread it out over the length of your contract.
Regarding locking, all Verizon phones come unlocked as part of their deal to buy spectrum a couple years back. As soon as they can legally lock their phones, they will absolutely do so, being evil incarnate.
To clarify for others potentially reading (as I suspect you well know the difference, stusser), there’s two main “locks” being discussed.
Carrier-locked devices can’t be ported between networks easily or at all. This is less common nowadays than it was, but there are presumably some devices being produced with modems that might only support one or two of the major carriers in the US, even if the companies are mandated to allow you to “unlock” them. But most devices nowadays have a modem that can more or less run on all the major networks, though maybe you won’t get full LTE speeds on some (since each carrier has its own “bands” of LTE that they principally operate on, and modems that fully support all major bands are rare).
Bootloader-locked devices cannot have any 3rd party system software or updates installed on them, and in general, the level of security behind these locks nowadays is more or less foolproof, barring a leak of unsecured code from within the OEM. This procedure is very common on Verizon and AT&T devices, and less so on TMO. It means you are entirely beholden to your manufacturer and carrier to get timely updates to your phone’s device, and may mean you also can’t root it to install certain useful utilities and updates, depending on the severity of the lockdown.
I agree about the Verizon: evil incarnate side of things.
Verizon does still let you upgrade at a reduced price for 2 year contract lock in, at least on some accounts.
Yes, that’s right. I was talking about carrier-locking-- you can pop a T-mobile SIM in a verizon phone and it will work. You can’t do that with AT&T, because they also drank the blood of Beezelbub, lord of Flies, but didn’t make that same spectrum deal.
Verizon bootloader-locks every phone, no matter what. So you can’t root it or install alternate firmware once they decide to stop updating it 3 months after release.
I’m long-since done with carrier-locked phones, subsidized phones, Verizon and AT&T. (well, OK, I have never used Verizon/AT&T). I feel no need to have a bleeding-edge phone and I am happy with the discount-rate MVNO options as my service provider.
Like about half the users of QT3, I ordered a 5x this week. I’ll give Fi a shot. Our family cost will stay about the same either way, and if service on Fi isn’t good where we live then it won’t cost anything to switch the 5x over to Consumer Cellular.
Believe me, I have no love for Verizon, though no real hate, either. It’s just that they’re the only carrier that provides reliable service where I live. I was with Unicell before Verizon gobbled them up years ago, and they just took over the Unicell network up here.
But if I buy a phone outright, from any vendor, it won’t be locked by Verizon even if that’s the carrier I use?
Verizon does not carrier-lock phones, period. They can’t, due to their agreement when buying spectrum a couple years ago.
I have no experience with the MVNOs that use Verizon’s towers, but you could look over the list. Any that allow you to bring your own phone means you could buy any unlocked CDMA-capable phone. I make no promise that you’d save money vs Verizon, but I wouldn’t bet against it.
For everyone hopping on the Fi train, I’d like to suggest Signal Spy for easy carrier switching, connected network and LTE band information, and data usage warnings. The pro version goes on sale for $1 fairly often.
I thought carrier switching was supposed to be automatic depending on whichever was the most powerful at any given location?
It is automatic but isn’t perfect (and we suspect may prioritize T-Mobile but have no proof). As an example my drive home cuts through a national park, and T-Mobile’s service is awful there (calls drop 90% of the time in a specific deep valley stretch). I have better luck with Sprint but for whatever reason it doesn’t kick over until I’m out of the problem area. Others that live on the edge of a coverage area use it to stick on a provider so they aren’t constantly scanning and draining battery.
Most of the time this isn’t an issue but for a buck I figured why not.
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
Thanks. This is all much more complicating than just paying the corporate overlords, isn’t it? Coincidence? I think not!
$400 android comparison: