Buying a Pixel from a carrier?

hannes

Hey folks!
I'm going to buy a Pixel 7 Pro in early Q1 and noticed that if I got it from my local carrier together with the SIM-card, I could save quite a lot of money on the phone.
I remember reading that graphene OS doesn't really work on phones that are marked by carriers, but after reading through the webinstaller again, it just said that an internet connection would be necessary on these kind of devices.
So before I go out and save myself some money, can I really just buy a Pixel from anywhere, or are there things I need to look out for and if so, what should I ask my carrier to make sure I get a device that works with graphene? :)

AdamBv1

Getting an unlocked one straight from Google is safest as you know it will work but past that it can be unlocked from many carriers I believe. Often this means having paid for it fully and then asking the carrier to go through an unlock process. Do some research on this with the specific carrier you are looking at before you buy.

I know there are exceptions like Verizon where it absolutely cannot be unlocked ever.

hannes

AdamBv1 alright thank you! I'm in the EU so I'm not sure if things work differently here. Do you by any chance know the exact terminology that I should ask about? Is it 'SIM locking' or 'OEM locking'? That way there'd be no way to get things confused when I give them a call :)

johndoe55667788

AdamBv1 Just curious wouldn't buying directly from google be a bad idea because they might be able to track the imei number?

I am a little concerned because I bought a pixel 6a directly from google with my gmail account. I am considering returning the one i bought from google and buying one online from best buy.

Could someone please advise me on this.

Thanking you in advance

AdamBv1

hannes It's the OEM unlocking you need to be worried about for installing GOS but you should check that it's SIM unlocked as well in case you want to use another carrier in the future.

hannes

AdamBv1 Thanks! I'll give them a call in the next week, as getting a pixel with a SIM from my carrier would save me around 300€ on just the phone over the period of the contract, which actually seems quite tempting :)

AdamBv1

hannes Almost forgot to mention, if you are talking with customer support they might understand bootloader unlocking better than OEM unlocking when you start asking questions.

AdamBv1

johndoe55667788 I guess they could attach that to your account although it won't get them much if you install GOS on it, they will never be able to see that hardware identifier through the play store or other Google apps since GOS sandboxes them from any hardware identifiers.

Personally I put GOS on my P7 before even installing my SIM card so there's no way Google got a look at that either. I did have to give it internet access through WiFi before I could enable OEM Unlocking but that never required logging in to Google services so they pretty much only got one little ping from this phone and then it disappeared from their view.