Chinese OnePlus 11 units are apparently region locked

The OnePlus 11 is a hot item right now, and it’s no wonder people are stocking up on units wherever they can. This led to a discovery on the Russian 4PDA forum and further investigation into what appears to be a region-locked OnePlus 11 unit.

Said phone came from China and worked great for about two weeks, after which a message appeared which roughly translates to: “You are using a region-customized phone. Its calling features are restricted in your area. Please contact customer service for assistance.” After that, the phone limited its calling functionality. It is unknown whether cellular data was also affected or not.

Region lock alert

Anyway, the 4PDA community did some research. The TeleService.apk (com.android.phone) app triggered the warning message. The community then managed to unearth the configuration files that actually list the MMCs of the regions where the region locking behavior is triggering. That’s right. It appears the restrictions only apply when using a Chinese unit in one of the listed markets. The list is quite long and available through the link below, but some of the target countries include India, Italy, Russia, and Brazil.

These are all countries where OnePlus sells the global version of the OnePlus 11 – a fact that makes the targeted region locking system a bit more logical. The main idea seems to be that the company does not want users to get imported phones in countries where there are official sales channels.

It’s not all bad news, however. The community also found a string in an OplusEngineerNetwork.apk file suggesting that users could lift the region lock by entering a 16-digit unlock code. Presumably, this code could be obtained per device by contacting OnePlus support. However, support may still be reluctant to unlock phones that are not purchased through official Chinese channels, but rather from third-party stores. This part is still unconfirmed.

Another speculation from the source is that this particular type of network lock could also be applied to some Chinese Oppo and Realme units. This also remains to be confirmed. But, needless to say, that would be an unfortunate development.

Source (in Russian) | Via