[Motorola Photon 4G] thundercles:
I have tried to locate a system dump from the KDDI version of the phone and haven't been able to find it, not even using google translate and going on japenese websites. What we do have is the source code for the KDDI build, it was released on the opensource site back in august....

precisely why I'm somewhat currently rushing to have the KDDI source compiled alone so that I can 100% verify that it is domestic carrier unlocked, though reports from foreign users indicate that this is almost certainly the case as upgrading to sprint-based ROMS has killed their GSM service to their local carriers. This means the lock is more of a lock to the sprint sim card (like the way the iphone was locked to AT&T sim cards here I imagine) and not a locking out specifically of all the US based carriers, which would be pretty complicated to write a baseband for all prepaid/service resellers carriers that use sim cards included. Much easier to just lock it to the sprint issued sim cards, you will notice the sim that came with the card is a "sprint" sim card and to my knowledge sprint owns no GSM towers whatsoever, but I imagine they have pretty massive peering and transit arrangements with carriers that do around the country which would give them a proxy/resellers type of prescense like all the non-real* carriers do here. I haven't heard of anyone with a KDDI photon actually inserting a t-mobile or AT&T sim and connecting to the network or making a call to verify for sure, but evidence is really strong.

tl;dr version is: pretty sure KDDI firmware/android is GSM unlocked thanks to a couple poor isralis that posted here that they lost access to their carriers when upgrading past firmware 5, which happens to be the last KDDI firmware released. It's a pity because it doesn't look like it's very possible to get an sbf or anything for those phones, but the source code is there and I'm compiling it and attempting to assemble a build ASAP for the poor saps who lost functionality with their native countries' carriers by unwittingly upgrading to sprint roms, this rom will also hopefully be just as useful to everyone who has somehow obtained a photon in the US but doesn't want it on sprint. Be patient I already built and ran the kernel, just need to tweak the build enviornment and pump out everything, I think it was my sprint code inserts that were making things screwey so I'm going to do a KDDI-code applied ONLY build to rush it out faster.

*that's all carriers operating in the US besides the big 4 with possibly some very negligable local service only providing cases, but maybe not even those. Yup cricket exclusively buys transit to specific verizon towers, that's why they made a big deal when they could provide service in 50 states, they were finally purchasing transit to verizon towers in all 50 states is what they really meant. Yup boost and virgin don't run any of their own towers either, they do what cricket does, only through sprint. Net10, tracphone and all the sim card based prepaid phones do likewise with AT&T and t-mobile. That's part of the reason I wasn't at all surprised the AT&T t-mobile merger got blocked, it just screamed anti-trust having one company own the countries' entire GSM infrastructure, look how much verizon is tip-toeing to avoid anti-trust (like buying incumbant carrier rights from telcos rather then the eintire companies like they did in the past) they I doubt they would ever even announce intrest in a merger with sprint for fear of a suit.

Thanks, it was this post combined with noticing the two israli's posts that gave me this wonderful idea.

PM me your E-mail, you're on buddy since I don't have a SIM card besides this sprint one, and I'd rather not loose the ability to use my phone for extended periods of time. You are primary-tester for my GSM unlock fix attempts if you wish.

It is a sad sad day when the government ever does anything in time for, let alone faster then dev teams :p