The most bizarre part is that Samsung retains this much control over phones after sale, that this kind of remote disabling is at all possible and that there exists code, built into the stock system image, that performs it. It can be said that they sell backdoored devices yet no one is even alarmed by this fact, only by how the backdoor is used.
They don't really hide it. For example, when buying from Samsung directly with the trade-in feature, when buying a new device they state that if the promised trade-in is not sent or is not as described, they can disable your new device remotely until you resolve the problem (by paying the discounted difference or I guess contacting support if the issue is on their end).
Wouldn't it be interesting if the consumer could remotely disable the phone they gave Samsung, if the phone Samsung gave them in return was not up to spec? Shows you who holds the power. As if their legions of lawyers and coffers of gold weren't enough, they use technology on "your" devices to further their reach.
That's new to me. I own several Samsung phones of different generations (Android app development does that to people) and while the update pop-ups are annoying, I could always put off the installation indefinitely.
Agreed. It's seriously disturbing that they have any access at all. I gotta wonder if other products are similarly compromised. ISP equiment comes to mind.
I don't know how it works in other parts of the world, but my experience with access technologies that require a modem, like DOCSIS, is that you're supposed to buy your own router to plug into the ISP-provided modem and configure PPPoE on it. It would make sense for there to exist two-in-one devices but so far I've only seen them for fiber. The settings on them are as advanced as they are on any router. The default admin password is printed on the sticker too.
In both the US and Asia in the past 20 years or so, I've been able to buy my own ADSL and cable modems from third-party sellers and have that as my only CPE. This avoids the rental fee and is often a win if you're going to use it for more than a year or so. I managed to get almost ten years of service out of one DOCSIS modem before I started having reliability problems and replaced it. I don't really know if it was failing electronically or was just too far behind network upgrades that demanded newer DOCSIS features.
Generally, I've shopped carefully and looked for compatibility listings to decide whether my chosen model would work with that particular ISP. You are right, with cable modems I've had to put my customized router behind it. But I purchased both the router and modem from independent sellers, not from the ISP.
I even took one modem from one ISP to another with a house move. I struggled until I factory-reset it once. It seems the first ISP had pushed some kind of update for their network that made it incompatible with the second ISP, but after a full reset the second ISP was able to configure service. They never came on site, I just called them and provided the DOCSIS equivalent of a MAC address so they could remotely provision it.
Everyone doing that these days so "its okay". Sigh
I mean really almost everyone, starting from apple and to gods-forgotten B-brands. Maybe some really really small ones are excluded since they don't have much resources, and pure AOSP which is rare thing to have preinstalled
Apple hasn't, to my knowledge, remotely disabled a phone like this. They do make it difficult to wipe a device locked by its user. But that's quite different from the mothership smoking it.
I realize it doesn't hold sway everywhere--sometimes it's even at risk in the US--but this relates to the First-sale Doctrine [0], essentially the idea that manufacturers can't use "intellectual property" to maintain a ridiculous degree/duration of control over an object that they already sold.
DMCA didn't so much "remove" any consumer rights as it placed the burden of proof on the consumer. So the "right" is still there you just need a lawyer to enjoy it.
> For example, to make it completely worthless to thieves.
That doesn't require the manufacturer to maintain any control of the device at all, it just requires the owner to keep the unlock key in a different place than the device.
You could choose to give the manufacturer a copy of the keys -- or anyone else you trust to hold them for you. But what right do they have to retain them against your wishes or use them without the device owner's consent?
Not even remotely the same thing. Leasing means you only pay depreciation plus interest; it is an economic alternative to up front purchase or installment payments.
If you’re okay with software companies charging different prices for users from different regions, how is this any different?
Also your phone don’t just drop dead once you enter Mexico, you’d have to activate the phone with a non-native samsung account for the block to kick in. My Germany created Samsung account still works on my German Samsung phone despite having living in Asia.
it's one thing to charge different prices per region, but quite another to disable the software or device just because i am moving to another country, or bought something while travelling.
They're both bullshit though. They make extra e-waste, give customers confusing hassles to deal with and retard the benefit of cheaper goods from abroad for more expensive countries which was really the only positive aspect to your common worker in those countries enabled by global trade.
> If you’re okay with software companies charging different prices for users from different regions, how is this any different?
You're asking how is backdoor access to other people's devices different from charging different prices? Are you perhaps confusing the goal (maximize profits through market segmentation) with the method (break into other people's property using a backdoor of your making, and sabotage that property)?
smart phones are such a shit show. I genuinely don't understand how people on 'hacker' news get so excited about these locked down, bloated toy computers.
And the same reason others are looking for the most "non-smart" cars they can find. As the meme says:
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
This. I used to love Androids because I could root them, change my ringtones for free and easily, and customize it to unrecognizable. Now I use iPhones because I would rather spend that tinkering time working on other things or with my family, and the interface is (mostly) stable and conducive to that.
I worked for a start-up that was struggling for money. The CEO had a bunch of relationships with small carriers in the US. One day he asked me to create a program that rooted a specific type of flagship Android phone and to update the carrier information to his choosing. At first, since we were a testing startup that had some government contracts, I thought this was for testing purposes since we had cell test equipment. I realized not too long after it was to basically enable small US carriers to sell flagship phones that were meant for different regions... Let's just say that was the final nail in the coffin for me at that specific startup.
>Let's just say that was the final nail in the coffin for me at that specific startup.
I don't understand what you had an issue with here? Legally it's completely in the clear (see first sale doctrine) and morally I'm not sure how it's any different than, say, the startups making IBM compatibles back in the 80's.
Not the person you’re replying to, but I would have a problem working somewhere that had a business model of signing contracts they had no intent of honoring. Ethics aside, I’d have serious doubts about how they would handle any stock grants or other obligations to me.
> One day he asked me to create a program that rooted a specific type of flagship Android phone and to update the carrier information to his choosing.
Are you referring to the baked in default APN's for different MCC/MNC combinations? Yeah those were/are quite annoying to have around if they were out of date. (I think there might be auto-update of these now, but that obviously requires a network connection)
Or are you referring to actual radio config partitions on the flash? (Where one was able in the past on many models, flip bits in order to activate different cell bands)
The former being janky and security risk, the latter being somewhat illegal.
This is from about 10 years ago. So the carrier apis were a little different then, but the answer is both were necessary to update depending on the test or in this case carrier.
The manufacturers have contractual agreements with certain carriers in specific regions and get reduced rates because of the purchase power of those markets. It's not ethical in my opinion especially if you want to have a lasting relationship with said manufactures, which we did, to purchase large amounts of those phones and then sell them to US carriers by changing carrier configuration. At the time we were receiving pre released flagship phones to test with. I see people arguing that it's a supply and demand problem and there is nothing wrong with it, but the reality is more like there is demand there, but at the time carries say in South America could make a quick Million USD off just dumping the phones to the US which leaves the people of that region unable to purchase flagship phones at reduced rates. I'm not sure if the economics are the same now, but that was my understanding at the time and I felt like it wasn't and ethical path forward.
Have you been to South America? Flagship phones don’t cost less here.
Paraguay is about 20% more, Argentina 100 to 200%, and Brazil 30 to 40% more.
Anything that is high end costs much more here due to a combination of tarrifs, reduced volume and the people who are wealthy not caring.
Read up on Ciduad Del Este, it’s basically the electronics hub for the southern cone where electronics are smuggled into Brazil and Argentina. Beef and eggs from Argentina get smuggled into Brazil and PY.
Anything that you were doing pales in comparison to what everyone here is doing.
Thanks for sharing I'm definitely going to read into it a bit, and I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about South American economics nor have I spent a lot of time there.I definitely haven't bought anything expensive there. As I said in a previous comments this was sometime ago, but I would say that if a bunch of carriers were selling their allotment of phones to US markets it could lead to the scenarios that you are depicting. If it's easier to offload to the US market expensive phones than reasonably there would have to be a big incentive to keep them in market which would inflate costs to be higher than US markets. I can't speak to the tariff issues though that could hurt my argument. It may be a lesser evil at the end of the day who is it for me to say. I just didn't feel right about it.
I think you are looking at this from the consumer side, and I completely agree with you. Consumers are probably none the wiser on the original intended region of their phone and should not be penalized.
I'm talking from a corporation/carrier side that let this happen to consumers. If you sign to terms of a contract that gives you special access to phones to sell in your region and then you just go and break that contract that doesn't seem right to me. To be clear I don't think downstream consumers did something wrong.
Sony makes an interesting though expensive one. The better answer would be Asus (Taiwan based.) I'd buy the zenfone because of camera and size, but alas I got a crazy trade in for a Samsung last year and now have no reason to change phones.
Edit: Specifically Zenfone 10. Top of the line SoC, 4300mAh battery, only 5.9", apparently good camera set up, and on and on. I don't know anything about the software though.
It is extremely unlikely that you actually voided a warranty by installing different software unless that software somehow causes physical damage (overheating?).
I think parent is saying that Asus (and everyone else) will try to enforce illegal terms WRT to unlocking voiding your warranty. From what I understand, this is very much the same with car companies trying to tell you that you void your warranty by not getting all service done at their shops (or failing to get timely service on systems unrelated to the covered part failure.)
I see. Well, whether unlocking the bootloader voided the warranty or not didn't matter in my case, since the phone seems very resilient so far. It has fallen in the toilet and had yoghurt spilled directly into the USB port and it's still trucking along.
I have a Sony Xperia 10 V (basically the budget model of the Xperia 1 V, costs about $350) and it works well enough on T-Mobile despite missing some of the bands that T-Mobile uses. I live in northern Utah, so your experience may vary depending on which bands the towers in your area are using I guess?
Main reasons I picked it were because it didn't have a camera notch, it has a headphone jack, and it has an SD card slot, all while being good enough power/performance-wise and without costing a fortune. Got it to replace my PinePhone which, sadly, is just not quite "there" as far as software support and other issues go.
Certainly seems that way. Ironically Google's phones are the easiest to customize and install custom operating systems on. They have a good attitude towards open source software and firmware. Certainly something I've come to appreciate about Google.
I work on a retailer that partnered with Samsung to implement a feature that would disable devices if the customers didn't pay their installments in time.
I was surprised with that kind of control from Samsung. In the end it feels that device is not really yours.
Title is not wrong but should probably say “disabled” since they aren’t disabling anything any more…
> Motorola and Samsung, the main culprits, had to cease their actions immediately and issued statements agreeing to cooperate with the Mexican government to find a solution.
They stopped in Mexico after threats from regulators there. I think it's safe to assume they'll keep doing it (or start doing again) in other countries where they can get away with it.
But at the very least, the article doesn't say they agreed to never do it again anywhere in the world.
I'm in Mexico and the news here mentioned that Motorola and Samsung did this as part of a "pilot" program in the country. Mainly because the consumer protection agencies here (PROFECO and IFETEL) are basically toothless and corrupt(ible).
The sad thing is that its guaranteed that they will do it again.
Not exactly this. But, Pakistan had a huge problem of smuggling, where people were getting new/used/stolen phones from other regions through the black market, and obviously not paying any sort of tax on the import and purchase of the phones.
Pakistan's solution was to force telecom operators to stop providing service to any phones which were not registered with the government. The phone is not disabled, just not provided any service within Pakistan. There is a grace period of three months from the first time a cell phone connects to any tower within Pakistan. This is sufficient for most vacation goers.
The whole thing is super obscene, because the amount of duty on the phones is extremely high. I think for flagship phones something like 60-70% of the dollar price.
> According to Mexico's Federal Consumer Protection Agency (PROFECO), Samsung smartphones acquired through the gray market pose a risk of suboptimal device performance. Moreover, it could also expose consumers to incompatibility with Mexico’s mobile networks, limit technical support accessibility and inadequate cybersecurity controls within the device, among others.
looool at this bullshit. Carriers can block incompatible phones, and most Samsungs are locked up tight bootloader/firmware-wise so that bit about security is a joke.
> Since the acquisition of technological devices through the gray market is not explicitly prohibited by Mexican law, multiple technological companies have urged the country to propose legislation aimed at preventing and prosecuting the sale of unofficially distributed devices. However, only eight days after going into effect, the PROFECO and the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) in Mexico petitioned Samsung to cease blocking smartphones purchased by unofficial channels, arguing that the measure applied by the South Korean company affected Mexican consumers' rights.
Numerous people saying the prices from the official distributor are incredibly expensive. This is true in a lot of smaller countries - one distributor has official distributorship and somehow it becomes the government's place to help them protect their monopoly on distribution.
> looool at this bullshit. Carriers can block incompatible phones, and most Samsungs are locked up tight bootloader/firmware-wise so that bit about security is a joke.
If I recall, they still (to my dismay) permanently blow KNOX e-fuses when the bootloader is unlocked, which permanently breaks quite a few features in the phone, even when bootloader is re-locked. (The health app, secure folder, some other things.)
Yes, carriers can still quite easily block incompatible hardware just by looking at the IMEI TAC when the phone tries to connect.
I suppose an even more insidious way of doing this would be Samsung forcing carriers to block certain ranges from connecting to their networks, as part of their support contract.
Seemingly it wasn't just samsung, but a number of companies all felt the need to do this. Some of them didn't go as far as disabling, but simply showed a warning, which does little to deter people from buying grey market phones. It's possible that all these manufacturers were worried about breaking some mexican regulation if they let customers continue using these phones.
If you import a phone from another country in Europe you can run into other issues. For example if you buy a Samsung in the Netherlands, Samsung Pay won't work. Because it's not available there, even if you have a bank account in another country where it is :(
There are also geopolitical considerations. If the US goes to war with China, is every OnePlus device a security threat? The fact manufacturers have more control over my phone than I do is infuriating.
I want when i mark my iphone as stolen on findmyiphone its completely worthless including individual components being blacklisted so they can't be parted out and sold individually.
As "scientists" loved to say during the pandemic, this is equilivalent of herd immunity for iphone users. thieves would know they are worthless when marked as stolen.
Now how would this be balanced with aritificial "geofencing" like samsung is trying to do here and right to repair?
Legitimate devices could voluntarily check the serial numbers of parts against a stolen parts database so the seller would be caught, and likewise carriers when they activate a device.
To make the parts checks mandatory would require controlling every device the part could be installed in, even when that device isn't stolen and the check is being performed against the will of the legitimate owner of that device. If you wanted to implement that scheme, having the government keep the root keys for every device for this purpose would reduce the number of parties with access to them and prevent their use for this kind of region locking.
Whereas with the system you propose, both the manufacturer and the government (every government where the manufacturer operates) can remotely control the device. Because a government can coerce the manufacturer, including to do what they want without telling anyone, or just send their intelligence service into the corporation to compromise their systems without the company even knowing.
So the scheme you prefer is actually inferior to the sort of remote government backdoors that are occasionally proposed and then condemned because of the catastrophic systemic risk they imply. For a small incremental benefit over honest carriers and buyers consenting to the automatic checks of their own volition.
No, and we should stop using the term "gray market" for perfectly legitimate international phone reselling. The phones aren't stolen, they were purchased and resold to another country. This is perfectly legal but manufacturers hate it because they can't price discriminate as easily.
In this specific case, Samsung has a local distributor in Mexico that upcharges significantly, so Mexicans just buy phones in the US and use them in Mexico. The local distributor hates this because they have no margin if they can't gouge Mexico, so they are trying to scare anyone using a US phone in Mexico so that they can sell you a new distributor-bullshit-royalty-bearing phone instead.
Intent... There isn't a law about upkeeping a corporation's expectation is there? Are these users in breach of anything? Good on the Mexican gov't in this case for protecting consumers.
Grey market refers to third parties buying a good in country A to resell in country B. As long as they pay the import levies the good is 100% legal.
Manufacturers (phones, cameras, books) hate this because they want to charge some markets more than others. Book publishers, in particular, tried to use the courts to ban this as a violation of copyright only to get laughed out of court because the seller loses all rights towards an item when it is sold
Ultimately it is free market capitalism in reverse. Which is ironic, of course, because your phone manufacturer would have an aneurism if their ability to use cheap foreign slave labor were curtailed
Reversing the roles of the players. Typically the little guy gets crushed by capital's freedom to flow. In this case, it's the little guy that exploits the freedom of goods (ie low tariffs) to avoid the big guy's power.
Any genuine customer purchasing phones could simply ask the seller (the phone OEM) for unlocked phones instead of region-activation-locked phones.
A potential scenario where bulk orders of region-activation-locked phones could end up in the wrong region is theft.
If the customers don't like broken phones, they should sue the person who sold the phones instead of complaining to the manufacturer to disable anti-theft mechanisms.
Grey market phones aren't stolen. Samsung sells phones cheaper in some regions, so arbitrageurs buy them cheap in one region and resell them at a higher price in Mexico. Samsung wouldn't sell region-unlocked phones at the cheaper price because they want to make money.
It's not stealing, but courts over and over, have validated that trademark owners, brandowners, have some control over regional sales channels.
Here's a case starting back in the 90s, over Levis jeans, and imports from a lower cost region. This is somewhat parallel to phone imports from a lower cost region:
Of course, this was about weakening brand perception, as consumer sale price was deemed part of the brand, aka the mark of their trade, trademark.
Thus, it was about the price being lower. In the case discussed in thread, consumers aren't saving on phone cost, retailers are.
But the hook is in, with repect to brand control as a viable limiter on imports and sale, so they could argue grey market phones might hurt the brand, as they've been modified or some such, prior to sale.
Ah, that makes sense and I stand corrected. There should be anti-e-waste legislation that bans or penalizes for this practice.
I'm not sure if region-activation-locking as a concept is unethical. I definitely think that for-profit arbitrage on region-activation-locked devices sold in improper regions should be banned though.
It is e-waste if there is no eventual end user. These devices are transient e-waste while they are stored in countries that they cannot be activated within.
They should be possible to activate anywhere is rather the point. But what does it matter where they are now if they can be activated somewhere, and consequently have value?
All phones are e-waste in the long run. What matters is whether any of their useful life is still in the future or if it's all in the past.
"In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. "
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."
How is "If I buy a good, I should not be able to sell it when/where I see fit? " implied by either of those things?
The idea of the free market in this context comes from Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, in which he says that a market is free if buyers and sellers can pursue their own self-interest. It's in the interest of the seller to sell the phone at a price higher than they paid for it, and it's in the interest of the buyer to purchase the phone from the seller at a price lower than would otherwise be available.
> he says that a market is free if buyers and sellers can pursue their own self-interest
probably we are agreeing, but just to bring a little more clarity what is meant by "free market" in the adam smith context:
> For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.[2] They say this implies that economic rents, which they describe as profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition.
so i'd say sellers trying to create an artificial regional monopoly/oligopoly of sales and high prices is the exact opposite of what adam smith would have preferred...
The idea the supply and demand are manipulated/controlled by the creator of the product, not the market of buyers and sellers. So that negates the private ownership part as well as supply and demand being controlled by buyers and sellers.
Why are you assuming only bulk purchases will be affected?
I bought my entire family new phones for Christmas, directly from the Samsung website. Except that there are 5 of us, and Samsung has a limit of 4. So I searched and searched to find a fifth phone of the same model at a comparable price through legitimate channels. And guess what, the phone I'm typing this on was purchased from a perfectly legitimate seller, but was intended for use in Mexico. Selling phones from one region to alleviate supply shortages in another is incredibly common.
It wasn't an issue for millions of people who purchased them. Now corporate greed is making it an issue after the fact, and you're defending it as some sort of moral high ground.
Wouldn't bother me if they targeted stolen phones. After all sorry but I don't see how you have a phone to resell unless you are an irresponsible consumer and I am pro shutting those people down.
if you buy a phone and use it till it dies, as we should, your phone shouldn't really be "resellable".
And shutting down stolen phones automatically is good for third world countries where owning anything remotely good means you are a target for criminals.
> if you buy a phone and use it till it dies, as we should
Why should we do this, exactly? Someone should use it until it dies, but that person shouldn't necessarily be the first owner. Why can I not use the secondary market to both subsidise my upgrades & provide someone with an opportunity to buy a second-hand phone at a discount?
I was pretty sure mmWave was getting installed at large entertainment venues, this PR from a couple days ago says Verizon has mmWave at all NFL stadiums[1]. ATT PR from two years ago says ATT had mmWave coverage in parts of 39 cities and 20 venues [2]. I couldn't find recent T-Mobile PR on this topic, but I'm pretty sure they've got mmWave deployments too.
So... networks are deployed, and handsets are deployed, but mmWave network deployment is always going to be sparse and in places with lots of handsets, they don't all need to be on mmWave, those that are free up other spectrum for other phones, so everyone gets improved service.
So how will the almost as big EU stadiums handle the load?
(maybe the answer is europeans go to watch the game...)
I found it interesting that Puerto Rico gets the iphones with mmWave, but USVI and Guam don't.
Also noticed that nonUS/CAN phones don't support 600mhz, and that can make a difference when you have lots of obstructions (e.g. forest/concrete) if you're missing that in US/CAN. Your next available frequency will likely be be 850mhz - doesn't penetrate as well, and could have more traffic/noise on it.
That's a good question. There are other techniques to get large crowd reception, so they'll probably invest in those, if they do?
Very interesting for USVI and Guam. I agree 600 mhz seems like a band you want to have... May as well after all the pain to over the air tv broadcasting it caused to get that spectrum. Unfortunately spectrum allocation seems to be in small chunks here and there with little coordination between regulators and then you end up with what we've got: any given handset can't reasonably work on all the bands, so a maker has to pick the bands based on the probable place of use (and sometimes the network, too)
I have a friend who worked at one of the major stadiums in the Netherlands and they had thousands of WiFi access points with directional antennas. Each one with a highly targeted beam covering only a few seats.
> mmWave network deployment is always going to be sparse and in places with lots of handsets, they don't all need to be on mmWave, those that are free up other spectrum for other phones, so everyone gets improved service.
I understand but obviously those on mmWave are getting a really great performance as this is the one area where 5G really provides a major improvement (due to the massive available bandwidth at those frequencies).
What bothers me is that as a European I pay the same for my flagship phone (sometimes even more as Samsung offers high discounts in the US in an attempt to take marketshare from Apple - here in Europe they are already #1) but I miss out on this feature. And often others as well, most of the time European Samsung phones get the far inferior Exynos chipsets whereas US phones get Snapdragon. Especially in heat and battery life these are a great improvement.
And it's not just Samsung. Apple does the same, which means there is almost no incentive for providers to ever start deploying mmWave in these busy areas.
