Yes, you’d think living in NZ I wouldn’t have to deal with any of AT&T’s shitweasel ways in the slightest, but of course which US carrier is the main source of 2nd hand S7 Actives? Why AT&T of course. And who decided against pushing to repair their damaged S7 Active this pandemic stricken year and just get one with a working screen and camera’s instead and didn’t check that the phone had been updated to 8.0? Why this idiot of course…
And what pray tell did AT&T fuck up this time? Why the simple task of providing updates for Android on the S7 Active. Because instead of just allowing any phone with their firmware to use their update repository they decided that you could only get the Android Update only if you had an AT&T sim card in the fucking phone. Which I’m some how meant to find here in NZ.
The only way this cack-handed idea makes sense is in a regulatory environment where this sort of anti-competitive behaviour isn’t ruled illegal. Where as in the EU any teleco trying this sort of shit would be in court and here in NZ the Commerce Commission would be threatening impending legal action. Interesting though, none of the other carriers that put out S7 Actives in the US pulled this particular shitsack of an idea, or so it seems from my limited searching into this issue.
So as of writing this, I have Odin writing of the S7 Active a stock version of Android 7.0 built for this phone and taking forever to do so. But at least this time it’s fucking working, since for some reason all the ports not on the backpanel didn’t work.
Hopefully it hasn’t stalled, but of course I can’t play any games though due to my RX 570’s nasty current habit of crapping out an very infrequent, but always random times. And I do not want to risk bricking this phone, even if it means I get a working screen and camera modules to transplant into the other one.
Probably will fix up the S7 Active with the damaged screen (pink lines, probable drop damage) just because I hate letting otherwise good hardware go to waste. But I think I’ll grab a dead one off ebay to practice getting the screen off in one piece.