I have been catching wind about the european Samsung note 3, that becomes unusable with lets say US simcards.
And that Samsung even locked those bootloaders to prevent tampering.
For Americans this might not be so shokking, after verizon locked the S3 (and maybe more samsung devices) but here in europe samsung has NEVER locked a single bootloader or no provider EVER requested a simlock.
This is bad. Very very Bad. I always liked samsung because of their open bootloaders, but right now, it seems they are closing it down...
How badly will this affect you is the question? Personally Samsung is slowly just ruining their flagship phones. The bloatware is getting worse. The phones are getting bigger. And the phones are getting more powerful but for what purpose?
The way I understand it, it's a region lock, which probably only affects the radio. Region locking has been requested by the US government for some time, because they don't like unlocked smartphones being used in the US. This way, imported phones would be useless in the US, and the control over devices would gravitate back towards the carriers and subsidized phones, which are illegal to unlock and even root. Big success for Google. Google is really becoming Skynet (and I don't mean Belgacom Skynet).
rofl zoltan. I dont believe ANYONE wants to become Belgacom Skynet :) (nah, jk, their mobile provider does kick ass.)
I heard that the region lock becomes active after you insert a sim card (so it knows what regions it should block from you if you insert other simcards)
I'd also like to point out it was really Samsung its decision to lock bootloaders (if they did?), not Google. And also locked bootloaders, are basicly barriers that cannot be crossed if you want to root. Not even the brightest XDA members have been able to unlock the locked s3 of verizon to date. For me it really isn't about legal or illegal to remove (fuck the law. The worst thing that can happen is a voided warranty.) but being ABLE to remove that.
But I'm still really fuzzy about the bootloader being locked or not. I see a lot of chatter around it but no definite answers. I will have to wait around in my store until I get my hands on one. (obviously I'm not going to buy one just to try that out)