Hi, I hope this finds everyone doing well.
I’m a 68 year-old noob (insert boomer/newbie jokes here:) hoping to get some help.
A little background, I switched over to Linux from Windows about 10 months ago so still trying to learn it as I go.
I’d like to have more time to devote to it but between raising my 15 year-old son (teenagers, what a joy /s ) and 9 year-old daughter I guess life, age, and laziness get in the way.
I live in Vietnam, going on 20 years now. The Vietnam part is relevant later (not the 20 years:)
Please indulge me while I vent a little, it might be useful to someone in the same situation.
I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy M51, bought it because of the 7000 mAh battery, for about 3 years.
I decided to do a factory reset to clean it up and start fresh but when I did it forced the installation of Zalo, Viber, Lazada, Shopee, and last but not least f’ing TikTok, and there was no way around it that I could find.
They had the nerve to call these “Essential Apps” and forced their installation.
I now despise Samsung with the fire of a 1000 suns and will never buy another one of their products, ever.
I deleted them immediately, but I had read somewhere once that just installing the app puts Sino tentacles into your phone and possibly network, and being in Vietnam it’s not the US version but, I’m assuming, straight from our northern “neighbor.”
Of course if it were the US version it would just be 3-letter tentacles :/
I won’t even give a house-guest my Wi-Fi password if they have the TikTok app installed on their phone.
Other than the gmail address I used to set it up I haven’t linked any of my other emails to the phone, so I’m forced to check those from my desktop.
Maybe I’m paranoid but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know for sure so I figure better safe than sorry, but still feel like I’m tilting at windmills :(
If you’ve stayed with me this far, thank you, I’ll be getting to the point shortly...I think...squirrel!
So to make a long story longer, I bought a used American P7P from a local shop with a 33 day (weird, I know) warranty.
I went in wanting to buy the black 128GB version that was advertised as 99% new and the equivalent of $341USD. They were out of the black but had the Hazel for about $8 more so I went with it.
And let me tell you, if you put it side by side with a new one straight out of the box you couldn’t tell them apart.
I later realized that you could check the battery cycles in settings, it had 183 cycles on it but I still felt good about my purchase.
So I tried to begin the GOS installation but ran into OEM locking greyed out. I spent all my free time the next 3 days Googling, DuckDuckGoing, Braving, Binging, and Yandexing etc., trying to sort it out. I soon realized if it was a Verizon I was fighting a losing battle but kept trying anyway.
I finally ran across a post recommending store.google dot com to check the IMEI.
Wish I had seen that sooner, it would have saved me 3days, sure enough it was Verizon.
[Moderator: removed link to image with IMEI ]
So I went back to the shop with a smile, good attitude, and fingers crossed. My plan was to see if they had another used non-Verizon I could exchange for, or if not return it and pay the difference for a new P7P.
As it turned out they had a used, black, 128GB that was just as pristine as the first with only 3 battery cycles!
And when I checked the IMEI it was an Fi !
[Moderator removed IMEI number]
I mentally did a little happy dance :) but when I checked OEM unlocking it was greyed out :(
I considered just buying a new one, but the boxes are sealed so no way to test it first. They sell a Japanese version (128GB) for $530USD or an American for $20 more.
Before going to the shop I had searched for whether the Japanese versions are bootloader locked but couldn’t find anything, other than forced camera shutter sound and possible payment app problems, neither of which would be a deal breaker for me.
And for the US version, some posts I read said that even buying straight from Google you could still end up getting one that was bootloader locked. What a cluster-you-know-what.
They told me I could exchange the phone, and that they would refund the extra $8 I paid for the Hazel, which I wasn’t expecting.
Rather than gamble the extra money on a new one I decided to take the black Fi and see if any of the work-arounds like factory reset, leaving connected to wi-fi for 24 hours, etc. would work but, unfortunately no luck.
So that’s where I am now.
I’m attaching another pic of errors that came up before “Data wipe complete” when I did “Wipe data / factory reset” from recovery mode.
https://ibb.co/nPpw6n3
Thanks for your patience reading this novella and thanks in advance for any help.
Cheers!