My internet suddenly stopped working. I lifted the blinds to check on the modem (old iPhone).

It felt like opened gates to hell itself, phone burned my hands when I tried to touch it and I noticed that it got so hot... that the screen unglued itself. Holy shit.

@elly lol u run it 24/7 as wifi hotspot? poor thing

@piggo Wired over USB to Google WiFi (running OpenWrt with USB-C hub attached to it). I couldn't get proper internet connection in Germany because ISPs don't accept my bank (N26), so I was stuck using that.

When I was in Japan and had time to think, I decided to move back to Poland where I can get 2Gb/s fiber and much nicer place for fraction of the price I'm paying here. The only problem is that my landlord is a scummy company and they're trying everything in their power to make me stay for entire length of the contract (2 years, fuck vonovia).

@elly Would the lte stick work better for this purpose?

@weirdtreething I still couldn't get it working, plus I would need to attach external antennas (which I don't have)

@elly @piggo Valid way to get cheap internet in Germany. Noob friendly way of doing this is Android phone with USB Tethering connected to a FritzBox Router (they have native support). Had that set up for half a year until the new provider finally finished the FTTC install.
And it's not like it would be a huge loss if a iPhone 5s dies, compared to the effort to rig up a wwan card/usb stick with external antennas.

@elly @piggo n26 used to be know for all the scammers that used it because they apparently had insufficient ID verification but I’m surprised it’s still denylisted at companies these days :/

@weirdtreething @elly mine got banned after a few days of use :(

@domi @weirdtreething @elly banned from like, the ISP?

@kitten @domi @weirdtreething @elly
Some ISPs don't allow tethering for some odd reason. That's also why so odd looking "features" like the ability to not decrement the TTL when forwarding a package were introduced in routers :D

@agowa338 @kitten @weirdtreething @elly not “TTL checking” banned, “modem tries connecting to network and never succeeds” banned. likely blacklisted my IMEI, likely because the chinese manufacturer used it multiple times

@domi @elly @weirdtreething @kitten

well restart your phone then. These chinese manufacturers often auto generate the IMEI on startup or there is some simple way (easily discoverable using the model number on e.g. xda developers) to arbitrarily change it. e.g. via a text or hex editor on a specific file or using a specific adb command.

At least those are they ways I've encountered up until now in this regard.

@agowa338 @elly @weirdtreething @kitten we're talking about a usb modem tho, not a phone... and that's not true, i'm running pmOS on it, i've documented in great detail how to initialize the modem, and no step is "change the imei". it worked with my config for 2-3 days, then it got restricted.

suggesting that i didn't try restarting it is almost insulting

@domi @elly @weirdtreething @kitten

You'd be surprised but some of these modems are running android on the chip...

Also I only outlined my experiences with cheap chinese mobile modems. I haven't seen other ways of "they cheeped out on the IMEI"...

@agowa338 @domi @weirdtreething @kitten we're not surprised, it runs Android 4.4.4 stock and let's you change IMEI in webgui (which AFAIK is quite illegal)

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_dongles_(generic-zhihe)

@elly it was outside the entire time? Oof.

@fun it's waterproofed now

@elly

@elly put PTM7950 and a Pentium 4 heatsink on it /hj

@elly @domi @weirdtreething @kitten

well illegal depends, what should people do against them? Withdraw their IMEI number allocation? Oh wait 🙃

@elly These things ship with only european lte bands enabled. I tried to enable all of them using various guides but everything I tried just resulted in modem firmware crashes.

@elly looking forward to the ifixit guide to repairing a phone with minimal tools that includes "and now run this cpu stress test app for half an hour to make sure the screen is easy to take apart"

@elly @piggo Germany in a nutshell

@elly I only remember getting that message after leaving a phone on a hotplate to open the screen.

How the hell did you push it so hard?

@elly I was nodding through reading this and then got to the end... yeah wow

@domi @agowa338 @elly @kitten What if you changed the imei to a real thing you have