This carrier now has a lock system that prevents you from using Developer Options

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TL;DR

Cricket’s new gadget lock makes 2025 or newer Motorola and Cricket-branded telephones unusable with out an energetic Cricket SIM or eSIM. The one approach round that is to attend six months, after which the telephone might be absolutely unlocked. Developer Choices are additionally blocked till the gadget is unlocked, so Android fanatics who care about this could steer clear.

If you happen to thought typical service unlock insurance policies have been annoying, Cricket’s new Gadget Unlock system takes issues to a complete new degree. As a substitute of simply stopping you from unlocking your telephone or utilizing a rival SIM for a number of months, the brand new app makes it unimaginable to make use of the telephone in any respect with out a Cricket SIM or eSIM. No Wi-Fi, no residence web page, no apps — nothing works until Cricket is energetic.

This transformation rolled out quietly a number of months in the past and solely targets Motorola and Cricket-branded gadgets launched in 2025 or later, although it’s actually doable that different manufacturers may finally be impacted. The one official approach round it's to remain energetic with Cricket for six months, after which the lock may be eliminated.

I actually see why they’d wish to introduce one thing like this. Cricket typically affords its telephones at an excessive low cost, making them a tempting choice for a mother or father who's in search of an affordable “mini-tablet” to reward their children.

For these questioning, there doesn’t appear to be any straightforward workarounds that allow you to use the telephone with out an energetic SIM/eSIM. When you can take away the eSIM and reset the telephone, it is going to robotically require you to redownload the gadget unlock app the second you hook up with Wi-Fi. That’s as a result of this isn’t simply an app, however plainly the ROM itself additionally has restrictions to stop its elimination with out Cricket’s authorization.

Cricket is subsidizing the telephones to ship the bottom pricing doable, and they also have the best to introduce software program locks like this. The larger problem is that the app grays out Developer Choices for these six months as properly.

The seemingly motive for disabling Developer Choices is that it might make it a lot simpler to allow issues like ADB entry and different settings, which may doubtlessly enable somebody to bypass the lock app. Nonetheless, I really feel like it is a larger deal than Cricket realizes for a lot of Android fanatics who aren’t essentially seeking to bypass something however do need the power to allow USB debugging for guide file transfers, drive actions to be resizable for break up mode, and different customizations.

If you're a Cricket buyer or desirous about being one, for now, I’d advocate avoiding Motorola or Cricket-branded gadgets if Developer Choices issues to you (or in case you are in search of a WiFi-only gadget, for that matter). The excellent news is that Samsung, Apple, and the remainder of the manufacturers don’t have this problem.