On an android phone, 5 years ago, it turned into a brick when i stepped out of shenzhen airport. There is a surprising amount of chatty network stuff going on

On an android phone, 5 years ago, it turned into a brick when i stepped out of shenzhen airport. There is a surprising amount of chatty network stuff going on under the hood that stops working. I ended up using a vpn which fixed it. Even basic stuff like contacts no longer worked . Plus without gmail, you can't recover a password or in some cases authorise yourself on 3rd party services. It was a brick.