Carrier specific update: is it REALLY THAT necessary?

I just got to thinking.

It is entirely possible to unlock your phone, and an unlocked phone can use whatever SIM you feed it with.

Keeping this in mind, wouldn't the optimizations of, say AT&T (America) be rendered useless when I put in a SIM from Telkomsel (Indonesia)? And vice versa?

It got me thinking that whatever optimizations carriers make, it won't necessarily be needed for said phone to function on said carrier.

Wouldn't it be theoretically possible for BlackBerry to release a "base" OS that works with every carrier out there?

STL 100-1 10.1.0.1720

When you put in Telkomsel (Indonesia) sim, it gets update from Telkomsel (Indonesia)
The updates are dependent on your SIM carrier, not where your phone came from.
As far as I know, there is NOTHING in the phone that is different between carriers. This isn't true for the OS5~7 phones, which have the carrier info baked into the hardware, so you can never remove the boot carrier logo

True, but if I never check for updates, won't that mena I never have Telkomsel updates (and thus, their specific optimizations for their network)?

STL 100-1 10.1.0.1720

I only use leaks mostly, but right now I don't even know where this OS came from :p

A leaked OS is pretty much a wipe, and i'm running the latest leak without any issues with my Canadian carrier.

Posted via CB10

Yes they are necessary, for example Vodafone UK removes the LTE option since they have no LTE yet.

Yes, it's absolutley necessary, from a carrier's point of view.

This is going to sound crazy, but stay with me here. I'm playing devil's advocate, but this is perfectly honest.

Let's say I'm AT&T and I have an over burdened network. So, I don't want to let phones on my network to be able to create a hotspot. I want my customers to buy a dedicated hotspot device and pay extra for it. Therefore I disable hotspot support in my version.

I've also cut a deal with Hotels com. The agreement is they will pay me X amount of dollars for me to force their bloatware on all the phones on my network. Therefore I add that bloatware to my version.

I have a bunch of customers that pay their bill late lowering my stock value. Therefore I force an AT&T "click here to pay your bill" icon in my version.

Sure you can get around all of this by side-loading a leak or just not clicking on update, but most people are sheep. Just look at all the iPhone users out there.

What SpencerNSO said basically :)

From a carrier perspective it is absolutely necessary to get their grubby, dirty hands on the device to add their bloatware and other rubbish they usually do (generally speaking that is).

From a consumer perspective we couldn't give two damns about carrier modifications - we just want the latest and greatest OS always available on our devices.

Sadly this most likely will not change any time soon until BlackBerry are in a position to twist the arms of the carriers.

Originally Posted by SpencerNSO

Yes, it's absolutley necessary, from a carrier's point of view.

This is going to sound crazy, but stay with me here. I'm playing devil's advocate, but this is perfectly honest.

Let's say I'm AT&T and I have an over burdened network. So, I don't want to let phones on my network to be able to create a hotspot. I want my customers to buy a dedicated hotspot device and pay extra for it. Therefore I disable hotspot support in my version.

I've also cut a deal with Hotels com. The agreement is they will pay me X amount of dollars for me to force their bloatware on all the phones on my network. Therefore I add that bloatware to my version.

I have a bunch of customers that pay their bill late lowering my stock value. Therefore I force an AT&T "click here to pay your bill" icon in my version.

Sure you can get around all of this by side-loading a leak or just not clicking on update, but most people are sheep. Just look at all the iPhone users out there.

Seems to be logical

Perhaps these leaks are one of the ways BlackBerry employee try to give out updates? :P

STL 100-1 10.1.0.1720