How are network carriers still so critical when choosing a phone in the USA? Seems to be a unique situation compared to other markets

1. Due to competing technical standards, a phone's hardware either works with Verizon and other carriers or it just works for other carriers.

2. If a phone is bought from a carrier then, because they're fucking pricks, they'll put that phone on a list such that no other carrier will accept it: carrier locked. If a phone is bought from the manufacturer then it'll be carrier unlocked and more expensive.

My wife and I can take our hardware to any carrier that suits us because we've the time to understand the scam and enough money to facilitate the wiser set of choices. The majority of Americans don't have the time or the money.

How come that nothing has ever been made to improve that situation?

The banks own the stock in the corporations that, through intermediate entities, fund our elections and write our legislation. Nothing is being done because our trade unions are weak and neoliberals don't understand why violence is now necessary.

Because American citizens aren't seen as people. They are units in a system, units don't need rights, protection or choice. They need to spend, produce and contribute to the system.

Americans have uniquely accepted a compromising position of a "lower" price phone that only works with one network and locks them in for a fairly long duration.

The American population has accepted quite a few of these uniquely compromising situations under the guise of "the free market"

it needs to be a specific model supporting their network carrier, especially the network bands.

That hasn’t been true for years. Back in the 3g and earlier days you’d need to make sure your phone was compatible with the CDMA bands if you used sprint or Verizon. And even then if they didn’t like you you couldn’t use your phone on their network.

But ever since we switched to LTE which is GSM that’s largely not an issue. Everything uses the same technologies, and it’s only a few minor bands here or there that might be missing.

5G kinda shook things up. In particular mmWave 5G which isn’t available in the rest of the world. But even then anyone can buy any carrier unlocked phone and use it with their network.

Also what makes you think that in Europe your phone might not support all the bands the carriers there use? My international market iPhone doesn’t support all the bands used in Costa Rica. Phones carry by region all the time. The only difference is in the USA they can be locked to one carrier unless you convince them to unlock it.

All Verizon devices are bootloader-locked and they will not unlock them. If you ever want to run a custom ROM, do not buy Verizon devices.

There are MVNOs using Verizon's network that have bootloader-unlockable devices. 🤷‍♂️