I recently found out that a locked device (aka a carrier lock) is actually locked in two very different ways.

1. the sim lock, which prevents you from using a sim card from a different carrier. This usually has some sort of policy regarding how and when to unlock the device (for Verizon it is if the device goes for 60 days without connecting to the Verizon network, might also need to be fully paid off as well)

2. Bootloader lock, this locks the bootloader and therefore disables any way of flashing anything (rom, root, etc) This is not something that will automatically be unlocked as far as I can tell and only the carrier can modify it. Most carriers seem to have the basic decency to unlock the device if you request it from their support, but be warned that there is no guarantee. What is guaranteed, is that Verizon will tell you to fuck right off and will never unlock your device.

The point of this post is to bring awareness to this issue, it is on me that I didn't properly research this and just assumed that carrier lock means just a sim lock, but this sucked.

I bought a pixel 8 which was sim-unlocked but sadly, as I discovered, its bootloader was locked and the "oem unlock" option was grayed-out. This is because it was a Verizon model that was out of the network but still, a Verizon model...

As of right now there are no known exploits against this device / Android version, and so, there is no known way to bypass this.

I literally argued, begged, and threatened Verizon. And their official stand is that they don't allow bootloader unlocks, they don't have the ability to do them (A lie) and that it will degrade my experience (Idiots)

So I started doing anything I could think of. I tried old exploits that were patched (unsurprisingly they failed), I tried sideloading other versions of stock android (worked but didn't affect the bootloader), I even setup mitm wifi hotspot that has a transparent tls inspection (see PolarProxy) but it seems that the OS does not trust any "user" CAs and so it tries to connect to android.googleapis.com, sees that the CA is not a system CA and aborts the bootloader check, which keeps it grayed-out. My idea was to spoof a valid response but apparently Android has good security practices (who knew)

Short of reversing the OS/Bootloader, it seems there is nothing to do.

So this is my warning to you, don't buy carrier models, but if you do, make sure the oem unlock option works, but if you don't, absolutely never buy a Verizon model.

ETA: I bought second-hand under the impression that it was an unlocked device, I thought that by checking sim compatibility I verified that it was, I was wrong.

Which is a better phone and why?

I have a pretty decent personal music library on my homelab server, but I am looking for a good Android app to play it. So far I've only tried Finamp, which connects to jellyfin. It's fine but I really wonder if there are some other options out there. TIA

Since updating to 15 I've had issues with this kind of text display. This, for instance, is in Messages. Messages itself is set to follow the system theme, and the system theme is set to dark mode. If I set it to light mode the text displays as expected. Trying to manually set the theme in Messages doesn't fix it. Nothing special going on with the phone itself - it's a Pixel 6 Pro just running regular Android. Thought I'd post in case anyone has seen something similar.

Basically I've acquired a burner Android 8 phone and am running the target.com app which is the only way they let you get parking lot delivery at the store. I assume the Target app is spyware. I keep the phone powered off almost all the time which should limit the spying. The thing is, if I power up the phone and order something, then close the app, I still get an alert when the status of the order changes (e.g. it's ready for pickup). So the app is still listening for network traffic from Target.

Can anyone explain what is happening in Android and whether there is a way to make an app really stop? Does the app stay in a running state even after I've closed the UI part of it? Is there somethng like an inetd in Android that listens for network alerts and re-launches the destination app? Are there Android app permissions associated with this, that I can revoke?

I don't want to run this type of app on my main phone, but I had at first liked the idea of using a burner for such things. Now, though, I wonder if I need a separate burner for each suspicious app. Thanks.

I've downloaded several Lemmy apps on my Android, and I've noticed that I only receive notifications when I open the app.

A small project to help out anyone trying to keep their old devices functional.

I wrote a script to scrape pages of some popular alternative OS projects (such as postmarketOS and LineageOS), and put them into a single list. I'll try to automate and keep this up-to-date. Any additional OS suggestions and comments are welcome!

A nice quality-of-life improvement to Google Photos for Android (and the web) shows Albums status in the Info panel.

My top android apps are : 1.Local send for file transfer 2.Bitwarden for password manager 3. Antennapod for my podcast 4.Seal for YouTube download 5.Boost for lemmy 6.Rimusic for YouTube music 7. Poweramp for local music on my phone 8.Lichess for chess 9.protonvpn for vpn 10.fairmail for email

Google quietly lowered the number of people who need to test an Android app before it can be released on the Play Store.

The Google Photos app is testing a new Quick Edit page that makes it easier to enhance or crop a photo before sharing it.

I am looking for a cheap android phone with better processing power, good camera and battery life.

Not sure if this is the correct place to post, but I just wanna kinda rant a bit.

I'm not the only one that hates this, right?

An app can just do a "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots"? Like... wtf?

Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone. It's my phone and if I wanna take a screenshot, I'm taking a screenshot. I don't care about whatever "security" the app developer wants.

Imagine if every online shopping app whether fast food or amazon, just used this to block you from taking a screenshot so you can't save the records in case of a dispute.

Which android developer thought it was a good idea to let an app disable a function on your phone. Even iPhone doesn't have this stupid concept.

Sorry for the rant.

Anyone wanna share your stories?

(P.S. I have a cheap secondary phone to take photos of the screen. "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots" my ass lmao, I'm taking the screenshot whether the app wants it or not.

I have 115

Android 16 will introduce a new Night Mode Indicator API to help apps automatically optimize photo capture in low-light environments.

Google Contacts could soon get an update that will make it easier to initiate video calls with connected apps like WhatsApp. Learn more!

Chrome for Android already lets you archive inactive tabs, but the browser is getting another handy tab management feature.

My wife has a Pixel 7 Pro that recently broke (flashing screen. It is usable but annoying), but it had an active insurance plan on it. So, she got a replacement pixel 7 pro.

This is the first time in a long time that I got to do an Android migration. (I should mention that my phone is made by a fruit company). I was really excited to see the option to plug in a usb cable and do a transfer!

However, at the end of the transfer, I’m not really sure what the migration does? The message history and photos are moved across and she was logged onto her Google accounts, but really important details never got transferred ( like the image used for the wallpaper/lock screen, locations of the apps on the different home screens)

Is this expected behavior for a migration, or did something go wrong? If this is expected, is there a way to get that info off of the old phone and onto the new phone?

The ones on XDA have dead links or have no workable instructions. Anyone have a complete repository with proper insructions? My T220 was very affordable but honestly, it's brutally slow. OneUI is too heavy for these resources. I don't want Lineage, since it does not allow moving apps to SD.

A solid generic Android with Root would be just ((((chef's kiss)))).

The device already has Developer options set to allow OEM unlocking and I have adb etc. on PC.

I hope someone has something good for me. Thanks.

Satellite messaging is coming to Google Messages and we've now got screenshots to show how the option will appear in the app.