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Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especial

Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especially in the US, enforce a lot of things in phones including locked bootloaders, disabling the second SIM or eSIM, removing FM radio support etc. Verizon is notorious to be the worst in this regard. OnePlus disabled the eSIM in their latest phone which let to outrage and returns among some of the enthusiast community.

spijdar 5y ago
The situation is complicated. I want all our software to be free and hardware easily modifiable, but I'm also aware of why radios are regulated the way they are. This is sort of a separate issue from the locked bootloaders on the phone itself, but the radio/modem on phones is very controlled and locked down, and ... probably for the better? Bad actors can already get their hands on the technology to spoof/intercept cellular traffic so that cat is kind of out of the bag, but if the modems were totally open and could effectively be turned into SDRs, I worry a bit about the ramifications. I've talked to script kiddie teens who get their giggles out of downloading some dodgy windows or android app to mass deauth wifi clients from APs. If it truly becomes easy to gain full access of your average phone's modem, I wonder what sorts of similar apps would appear. Maybe it'd be no worse than wifi, but given the much greater scope and potential damage from a DoS'd/jammed cell tower, it's a heavy topic IMO...