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
In France (it might be a European thing, others will maybe confirm), carrier phones have to be ulockable after 6 months (assuming they’re still locked to begin with) . Just ask your carrier and they’ll unlock it.
Of course it’s best to buy hardware outside of their ecosystem to begin with.