For years, I have read US based bloggers cry about the carrier locks and frustrating limitations on the use of smartphones, but I happen to get it much more clear on my first visit to US. So I land here all excited and eager to go about shopping for tones of gadgets and when it comes to smartphones, I have had a rocky ride. Firstly all good phones are sold locked (yes I knew that), but I never knew it would be so frustrating. AT&T mentions a no commitment pricing on their website, but when I land at their store and ask for one of those devices at the no commitment price – they refuse to sell it to me. They just don’t want to sell it without a contract even if I pay the full amount for it 🙁
Things just get started there. I ordered a used iPhone 3GS and a new Palm Pre Plus without contract on eBay and have them in hand here. To begin with, I used AT&T SIM on that 3GS / Pre which was otherwise running a dumbphone with no data plan. And guess what AT&T sends me an SMS few days later that I have incurred over $50 in data charges already. They activated data plan automatically as I used a smartphone!
The carrier locks are so nasty that to activate a Palm Pre Plus one has to sign into the Palm profile and the only way to do that is to run a SIM on it with AT&T data connection. You just can’t login to your Palm profile via WiFi. I just can’t imagine the restriction this puts on you. Imagine if one of my friends is going on a international vacation and he chose not to take phone along with him on international roaming, I can’t borrow and use that for a while peacefully if its a smartphone. Isn’t there something like trying out a phone before buying it? Can’t I just put my SIM in a friends iPhone and try it out for a few hours to get a feel? I happened to run out of battery on my E63 that I was carrying from India (no charger with me either), and I decided to enter my SIM in a old Nokia phone which perhaps has a colour screen as its most notable feature and guess what – ITS LOCKED! I can’t use it. Come-on its a 3 yr old handset and worth not even $20 today.
God bless the jailbreakers and unlockers – but for once – yes for once – I am happy to be in India. Not all the earth shattering gadgets launch here, or they launch terribly late. I might have to go to a grey market and buy a imported smartphone. But at least I can use it around without any restrictions. I am just shocked on the kind of suppressed and jailed ecosystem that exists here.
