Brand New Pixel 8a OEM Unlocking frustration...

zook007

I purchased a brand new in a sealed box Pixel 8a (from eBay seller), advertised as "Unlocked -- my plan was to install GrapheneOS. I did the Developer options bit, and I get "OEM Unlocking" is greyed out, as are the 2 "Bluetooth HCI snoop" options above. I have spent two hours going through installing the USB drivers to talk to it, doing the dial-up CHECKIN which gave me a chime, but no "success text, nothing" and attempting to flash Android via the website. My phone connects to my PC via USB OK, the USB debugging is on and working, but I cannot get the OEM Unlocking to change, remains greyed out. Is there a solution to this, or is this one of the Pixels that are not possible to unlock ? ...or did I miss something in the process ?

since it is a brand new phone I do not have a SIM in it, nor did I connect to wireless, it is connected to my PC (which has internet access) via the included USB-C cable...

Any help would be most greatly appreciated...

zook007

will I have the same luck if I purchase directly from Google ?

nullrunde

Connect the Phone to internet.

zook007

nullrunde THANK YOU !!! such a simple thing, but no hint, or note anywhere saying one has to do this !

de0u

zook007 such a simple thing, but no hint, or note anywhere saying one has to do this !

The installation guide says:

On device model variants (SKUs) which support being sold as locked devices by carriers, enabling OEM unlocking requires internet access so that the stock OS can check if the device was sold as locked by a carrier.

zook007

de0u I understand, but my phone was brand new out of the box, and had no carrier associated with it. I had assumed that since I was to install Graphene on a totally virgin phone, I did not see the need to set up access to my Wi-Fi until after I had Graphene installed... not to mention my Wi-Fi SSID password is 31 random characters long, which I do not remember in my head, and could not be copied and pasted to the new phone... :) Anyways, all done now. I am switching from iPhone iOS so have some learning to do now...

zook007

...got it all installed, easy no issues. Thank you again for the help -- I was about to pack up the phone and send it back to the eBay seller with a note saying "it was not unlocked, I want a refund" -- good thing I did not. Hope this post helps someone else down the road...

de0u

zook007 I understand, but my phone was brand new out of the box, and had no carrier associated with it.

Correct, but the fact that it has no carrier association is not stored anywhere on the phone when it leaves the factory.

That fact is stored in a Google database. The phone won't OEM-unlock until it can contact that database to ask permission.

Then the phone stores the answer locally.

raccoondad

de0u I wonder the potential to spoof it. They could be using a reduced CA set/have a certificate pinned in the code that handles the OEM unlocking feature...but if its based on the systems CA including user CAs....