Ohhhh, is that how it works? Maybe I should try that next time. Instead of selling broken hardware as "NOT TESTED, AS IS, PARTS MACHINE" I should sell them as "100% working!" and when someone asks, I'll tell them "sorry, it's not feasible to search through all devices and find the working ones"
Source: I ditched the techpocalypse at the end of 2024 and now happily work at a grocery store.
Go make a stink about it at the customer service desk and they will probably say exactly that.
> Devices sold in partnership with specific carriers may be locked by the carrier, which will prevent installing GrapheneOS. This is primarily an issue with US carriers and isn't common elsewhere in the world. To avoid this, either don't buy a carrier device, or make sure it can be unlocked.
Their About page says:
> The inspiration for Swappa sparked when Ben had trouble finding a good source for test devices for Android development projects.
So I bought an “unlocked” Pixel that had a locked bootloader. Returned it. Felt bad because the seller correctly classified it.
Ultimately I found an eBay seller (thegizmotrader) that explicitly lists the bootloader as unlockable.
When buying secondhand, I suggest looking for Pixels not associated with any particular carrier (as are sold by Google online store), and especially not Verizon.
The easy way is to search for ones for which the seller explicitly says "OEM" or "bootloader" unlockable/unlocked (or seller says it already has "grapheneos", "graphene", "calyxos", etc., installed).
For awhile, I came up with some tricks to try to get a better price by identifying ones that were bought directly from Google (rather than through a carrier, which are who has been disabling bootloader unlocking thus far), but decided it wasn't worth the effort.
Of course, you can also just buy a new one from Google.
I generally trust private sellers a lot more than professional ones, if you vet them well enough (check their page, check their reviews, check their other listings), the chance that you'll get a good deal on a device in the condition described. The incentive to gain a profit is a whole lot lower, a commercial seller has to make sure they're the winner in some way during a transaction, they have bills, staff and assets. A private person is often happy to just get rid of the phone, as it would usually rot in the old phone drawer, until it eventually ends up in an e-waste bin a decade later when they clean out. Getting a little money back is already a win. Surprisingly, I've never had a bad experience. I presume there's also buyer protection, but I'm hoping I never have to use it.
I feel like eBay put a lot of work into creating a competitive marketplace where honesty was rewarded, and it basically works well but they got an unsavory reputation anyways. Then Amazon tried to hide that complexity from the end user and buyers just get burned. Maybe Swappa is trying to go the Amazon route? I do not think there are real shortcuts here. Either the marketplace needs to vet sellers manually, or offer a competitive, transparent reputation system like eBay.
and if you did you could use curve pay instead. Basically the same thing with more features, the only catch is that they charge FX fees after surpassing a limit (but that can be mitigated by paying with the same currency of your linked card, thus never executing a change in the first place)
My tiny local credit union app isn't on there, but it worked fine. I miss wallet a bit and it's a shame that there are important apps which still refuse to act reasonably, but I don't think it's really that bad.
I also dont think everything needs to be an app.
also my bank apps install, but yes, no tap to pay
Even my 2015 Mazda has enough vehicular settings in the infotainment menu that despite being replaceable with a double-din I haven't bothered because I'd lose all configurability there. I opted for a cheapo $100 carplay unit instead - the modern equivalent of the discman-to-tape adapters ;)
So it’s actually kind of a real thing
Having said that, a successful car infotainment system attack on android auto or apple carplay could, of course, compromise your phone.
So it's up to you whether you decide to cope with that possibility by breaking the law and navigating with a handheld device, or simply declining to do banking on your phone, since successful car exploits mean the attack surface against your phone is much larger than you might presume.
I had issues with receiving incompatible "variants" of compatible devices when shopping for used phone for custom roms
As a side note, I've been using it for a few months now, and it works great. All the apps I use run on it just fine. Battery life is great, and you don't have a bunch of cruft from Google running on your device. Can highly recommend for anybody looking for a phone you actually own.