Thank for your answer, at present, I cannot contact my friend because I have lost his information, so I don't know he has paid it off and I live in Vietnam. Is there other way, bro?
Options…
Yeah, I think second and fourth options is the best choice. In my country, iPhone is locked by carrier from America, which is one of the most popular iPhone for everyone because it is much cheaper than global version. With third party, I have my iPhone's information like the capture, can you recommend an online third party unlock service, bro?
Agree.
Yeah, I don't know that thing, thank you bro, can you recommend any carrier which is easy to unlock?
No, I'm sorry. I can't. I've never used one of these services. I only know what I know simply because I used to be on Sprint and did some research to see if I could get my own phone unlocked.
AT&T actually has an unlock portal: https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/ but you need to know at least some information, like the last AT&T phone number the phone was linked to.
The whole carrier locking is super annoying IMO but I understand why they do it. I had a phone from Spectrum and it was unlocked. Long after I paid it off and switched carriers I did a restore. That pings Apple's servers and part of that is to check the serial number to see if it's listed as locked or not. Spectrum didn't send whatever they need to Apple at the time so my phone was remotely carrier locked by Apple during the restore. Apple apparently isn't authorized to unlock phones without permission so I had a three day long customer experience fiasco to get Spectrum to tell Apple to unlock a phone that I owned ?
Well, it made sense back when two year contracts were a thing. I don't think it makes sense now. If you buy your phone on installments and it's unlocked and you skip to another carrier the lever that your old carrier has is blacklisting. Or, like with T-Mobile's new customer guarantee, you can still be allowed to make payments even though you're on a new carrier.
As a non American, I never understand carrier locking. I mean who cares if the person sells the phone the next day, the person still needs to fulfill the contract. Besides, US carriers often do background and/or credit check for contracts, right?
I remember when Verizon made some deal with the US government that they would not carrier lock iPhones if they could sell them. I think that lasted for a few iPhone models and they somehow got out of it. They claim it's to prevent theft in the supply chain. I was talking to a guy that worked at AT&T and it's crazy the power they have. They can remotely lock your phone with the push of a button. Even with a phone from another carrier or one you bought yourself. Of course they CAN do this but I doubt they're supposed to or allowed to.
Well it started when carriers would give you a free phone or sell it to you ridiculously cheap in exchange for a contract where you would agree to pay for two years of phone service. Without the carrier lock you could just take your phone elsewhere and ignore the contract. Sure they would put it in collections and it would go bad on your credit but that wouldn't stop people from doing it. You would end up with a free phone and a cheaper phone bill.
In Hong Kong/Singapore, they made a regulation to ban carrier locking.
It makes a certain warped sense. What will happen is that a carrier has a deal - so you get a phone on a good deal. If it's unlocked, you turn around and sell if for full price. Now the new person has the phone you got on the deal, you have the money and no incentive to pay the phone. The phone gets blacklisted and the new owner is the one that's screwed with no way to pay off the phone (privacy laws won't give that person access to any financial details).
The deal with Verizon was with the FCC. The FCC allowed them to use a specific radio frequency and in exchange all Verizon phones were to come unlocked out of the box. This has changed in the last two years and it's now 60 days.
Apple is the only phone that I'm aware of where the OEM takes burden of customer service. If you have problems with a non Apple phone your carrier or insurance if you have that is your only way to get help. Before someone mentions it yes I know Samsung has some stores but their support isn't even close to the level of Apple's support. You get someone who is mostly a sales person that has a little knowledge of phones to help.
We almost had something like that. When Obama was president there was a lot of talk. US carriers aren't dumb, rather than get regulated and forced into unlocking, they took a proactive stance and OFFERED free unlocking for paid off phones. They created an industry agreement and presented that as a fait accompli. Congress backed off. So, we have a middle ground because the carriers didn't want to get regulated.
