I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen perfectly good phones just become e-waste because of carrier locks. There’s been a few times I wanted to buy a used phone I saw on offer up because they were cheap but I didn’t because it’s locked to T-Mobile or Verizon. Phones are built to just become e-waste and it’s such a fuckin waste of resources. I didn’t even get into the fact the bootloader is almost always locked too. It’s so fuckin dumb
Carrier locks that you can’t get unlocked are almost always because they didn’t actually pay for the phone. The “cheap phone” is subsidized by the high monthly service cost and having to be subscribed for x amount of time is part of the deal.