Adventures in Unlocking: Why I hate everything mobile

READ THIS BEFORE BUYING A NEW PHONE IN TORONTO

So my iPhone 3G was dying, it could only hold a charge for an hour and according to the nice folks at iRepair, the power control chip was shot.  If short the phone was pooched and needed to be replaced.

While Apple was launching the iPhone 4S I decided against it and went with a Samsung Galaxy 4G Infuse.  It  is a sleek, beautiful phone. It last a large screen, great colors and it relatively easy to use. The downside was that Fido, my current provider only has ass phones. I wanted something that didn’t suck.

This meant I had to go to Rogers,  that was okay since Rogers owns Fido I knew from experience that the Rogers devices could run with a Fido SIM card so I was in luck.  When I went in I asked if Rogers was able to unlock it. I was told they could for $50, which was fine with me.  However when the service person came back he informed me they could only unlock phones for Rogers customers (such is the stupidity of the mobile communications space in Canada).

I bought the phone anyway knowing I could easily take it to Chinatown and get the damn thing unlocked if I needed to for $20.  Later I realized I should have pointed out that by buying the phone that made me a Rogers customer.  The phone works anyway so that’s fine.  I also found out later that cell phone providers are forced to unlock phones by law.

The Bill mandates that:

• consumers buying new cell phones in Canada must be informed of the existence of any SIM lock (also known as a network lock) on their phone before sale;
• wireless phone companies must unlock handsets upon request, without fee, when a consumer purchases a new phone outright (unsubsidized) without a contract;
• wireless phone companies must unlock handsets upon request, without fee, when a consumer comes to the end of their contract, or at any time thereafter.

So it seems Rogers fucked me over but what else is new, that company is just selfish and evil.

So while I was able to get my phone unlocked in Chinatown and got my special unlock code – 81863973, I suspect that is unique to my phone meaning I can’t share it with others who want to do the same thing and save them $20.

I was not able to do what I really wanted, which was to delete all the shit that Rogers had put on the phone.  For example, the Facebook app.  I hate Facebook and everything it stands for.  I  don’t want this shit reporting back to Mark Zuckerberg.  Can’t delete it, or change the settings:

• Your location,
• personal information,
• network communication (your internet usage),
• Your accounts,
• storage,
• phone calls,
• as well as your system tools

Considering I didn’t ask for it.  That should be removable.  Other apps include the Rogers My Account,   urMusic,  Music Player and more…

You can’t even delete the fucking bookmarks it put on to the Rogers store.  I tried a hard reset, a factory reset and after much reading realized I need to root the phone, delete the OS and install a different operating system. All this just to get that crap off my phone…

Now compare this to a PC (not a Mac because those are full of shit you can’t delete).  You can easily build a computer from scratch, put on any operating system you want.  Format the drives again and put on a new OS.  No special tools are needed, no secret codes. It just works.

In the meantime I tried download a number of programs which will allow me to control the content on my phone, but because the infuse is so new it doesn’t work with anything yet.

So when people ask why I dislike mobile so much, it’s because it is such a gong-show. Seriously can no one make a phone that is easy to use, easy to manage, easy to customize and control?  How hard can it be to create a phone that users can customize the apps, the carrier, and the content?

Anyone? Anyone??  Bueller???