We still don’t know anything about the future of the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, but the situation is little bit complicated at this moment. Nonetheless, the CDMA loving carrier is rapidly expanding their 5G territory. They are also offering 5G ready smartphones for their customers.
Besides Samsung Galaxy S10 5G and the LG V50 ThinQ, the newest addition to Sprint’s 5G device portfolio is OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. Well, that’s not the same phone you can buy from EE in UK or from Elisa in Finland.
OnePlus took a big step forward in the 5G master race when they decided to sell the 5G variant of the OnePlus 7 Pro in Europe. Unlike the USA, European carriers are not exactly taking playing the game on behalf of the customers. As a result, EU edition of OnePlus 7 Pro 5G is carrier unlocked.
In one of our previous articles, we highlighted the difference between the codenames of the Sprint (GM1925) and European (GM1920) OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. We also speculated that the carrier branded variant should run a non-identical version of OxygenOS.
Well, it is now officially verified by none other than OnePlus. The Chinese OEM published the kernel source code of the factory installed software of the Sprint OnePlus 7 Pro 5G as per their commitment. Guess what? The software update channel is entirely new.
Stop right there, as there is another news waiting for you. IMHO, it’s nothing new, but we are now confirmed that the bootloader of the Sprint branded OnePlus 7 Pro 5G is not unlockable. The ‘OEM Unlock’ part is reportedly missing from the firmware itself.
I just purchased the Sprint OnePlus 7 Pro 5g (Model#: GM1925 Firmware Version: 9.5.12.GM25CC). I absolutely love the phone to but there is one huge issue with it. Sprint has disabled the OEM Unlock setting in developer options making it impossible to unlock the Bootloader and root the device!
(Source)
Sounds familiar? Well, T-Mobile does exactly the same thing, plus added a bunch of other (artificial) limitations on the regular OnePlus 7 Pro. They do have a bootloader unlock facility; even started rolling out Android 10 update as beta, but I doubt the Sprint model will get the same treatment in near future.
Moreover, Sprint removed the ‘Local Update’ option from the firmware. As a result, end users can not manually sideload the update packages.
Do you still want to buy the 5G edition of OnePlus 7 Pro from Sprint, given the sheer number of imperfections? Comment below.
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OnePlus 7 Pro 5G
Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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