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Comment by dangus

5 hours ago

I think this isn’t true at all, before the iPhone existed cellular carriers controlled software on consumer phones.

Remember when GPS navigation was a $5/month app that was a cellular plan addon?

2 comments

dangus

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ptx  4 hours ago

Only phones sold by carriers were controlled by carriers. You could easily (in Europe at least) buy an unlocked phone and put in a SIM from any carrier of your choice. You could then easily install (i.e. "sideload") Java apps from anywhere you wanted, e.g. from a storage card or over Bluetooth, although some permissions were restricted unless you bought an expensive code-signing certificate.

  • dangus  2 hours ago

    As I recall, in the US at the time the best networks were CDMA and had more strict device activation requirements, especially Verizon.