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Unless it's explicitly described as EU/US version (I assume there's no difference in quality or hardware), I don't see the problem in buying a "China only" phon
by jotm 9y ago
Unless it's explicitly described as EU/US version (I assume there's no difference in quality or hardware), I don't see the problem in buying a "China only" phone?
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago4G radio bands may differ - bottom table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands
- pishpash 9y agoSometimes they have more features for cheaper - dual SIM and NFC come to mind. US phones are very crippled in general.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoWhat US phones don’t come with NFC these days? Dual sim is a niche feature that doesn’t make sense in the states.
- jhoechtl 9y agoA US citizen consultant working for weeks abroad, buying a local sim card. That doesn't make sense to you? Niche maybe, but certainly useful enough to be included.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI worked abroad for 12 years, 10 even in China where dual sims are even more common. Even my Chinese colleagues would often use an iPhone and just switch the SIM in the airplane, it isn’t that hard. Dual sims are actually meant for (a) people with a personal and business SIM or (b) people cheating on their wife (so an official SIM and a SIM for the xiaosan(s)). Both very niche even in China. Dual SIM simply isn’t really a feature that would drive phone sales in the states.
- opencl 9y agoThe Moto G5+ doesn't have NFC if you buy it in the US. It has NFC if you buy it anywhere else in the world. But there are lots of phones in the US market with no NFC: BLU Grand M2, Zenfone 4 Max, LG K3, etc.
- londons_explore 9y agoPut a european sim card in, and support will come back... You don't even have to reboot! It's simply a software lock.
- londons_explore 9y agoNFC has various patents. The Moto E4 Plus for example will only activate it's NFC if you put a sim card from one of the big european carriers. If you put in a sim card from a small carrier or a USA carrier, suddenly all mention of NFC vanishes from all menus.
- jotm 9y agoHuh, I really thought we did away with band incompatibility (with phones supporting most of them, and them being globally standardized) :(
- pishpash 9y agoThey are standardized and oftentimes available in hardware but carriers disable them for obvious reasons.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSorry, what are the "obvious" reasons? Why should my phone supplier care to stop me using my phone abroad, say?
- merb 9y agodo they really disable them? I always thought that LTE modems only come with certain frequency bands. I can slightly remember that the iphone 5 only had 2 or 3 frequency bands while at the beginning of lte some providers did use the frequency which the iphone had more often, so some providers had better lte support. But I can hardly remember, it was some years ago and my provider switch basically came within the lte rollout. I mean it probably also consumes more energy to scan more bands (ok that could be solved with software)