I was looking through some Pixels on Amazon and the sellers indicate when a phone is “unlocked” but they don’t specify if it’s carrier unlocked or factory unlocked. I’ve even found reviews from unhappy customers who said that the phone they received is not oem unlockable even though the listing said factory unlocked.
On the other hand, when I look in eBay, there are sellers with 99.3% positive ratings who are very specific in their listing indicating that their phones are “oem unlockable for developers”.
Is there any advantage in buying from Amazon instead of from eBay? Any other input is welcome. Thanks in advance
Be careful buying a phone from eBay. There’s a scam where once you get the phone the seller calls it in as stolen and the IMEI is blacklisted (so the seller gets insurance money). There’s nothing you can do to stop it. My Pixel’s IMEI slot 1 got blacklisted but slot 2 (esim) is okay and I’m using it without issue, though limited to one esim at a time now.
eBay’s always been fine for me, they have the 30 day returns thing if it’s actually defective/not what’s promised. You should message the seller to ask it’s not carrier locked.
Why not buy the phone from the manufacturer directly so as to not give money to Big Bezos, if you’re going to buy new?
Or was this talking about used Amazon listings?
Yeah I’m looking to buy used. My 6 Pro will stop receiving updates this year. Edit I guess that alone is a good reason for me not to use Amazon. I’m not sure if it’s safer in any way tho as far as receiving the phone as advertised without a messed up camera.
For second hand, user-to-user sales via EBay and Vinted are the cheapest, but it takes more effort and you could get scammed.
I’ve bought a few devices second hand at a second hand electronics shop. In the UK, this could be CeX, for example. With many of these you’ll get a limited warranty, and you can walk into a shop and ask to look at the phone and ask questions. You can ask if it is locked and return it if you can’t use it.
I recommend Swappa.com because you get better quality assurance, 30 day money back, and there is basically zero chance it has its IMEI blacklisted (some sellers on eBay and Amazon may sell stolen phones).
I’ve used swappa before, had good luck with them and would definitely recommend. OP should also check out backmarket.com as they have a dedicated section for Pixels.
Okay thanks, I see also that by default when they list ‘unlocked’, they mean factory unlocked
What about Facebook marketplace?
You are better ordering from neither. Amazon group batches their inventory. Their “sellers” appearance is just a price fixing scam. There is no way to trace the stuff Amazon sources to any specific seller. So everything from them is sketchy. The same applies with eBay. Most people are legitimate, but there is no effective way to tell who is or is not legitimate.
There are two ways of looking at this. One, assuming you will install Graphene, the way Graphene uses the Trusted Protection Module TPM chip is to not trust any unregistered code. So a person will not be able to do much to the device to compromise it as far as I am aware. This is conventional type attacks. The second way is more abstract of what is technically possible but improbable and probably never happens in the wild. For instance, one unlikely aspect to be attacked may involve the modem. I am not certain what the Pixel’s actual architecture involves between the SoC and peripherals. Often, the modem on mobile devices is another sophisticated microcontroller. This is capable and entirely independent compute device. The OS is interfacing with some kind of API, but is not privy to what is actually running on this hardware. If it was eavesdropping and communicating over cellular or WiFi, you would not know about it. These devices are undocumented and proprietary hardware too. The orphan kernel scam used to artificially depreciate hardware is based on the proprietary undocumented SoC and modem.
fuck amazon.
input depends on which continent or country you’re in(?)
