[General Questions and Answers] Blombardo:
I'm more inclined to find other companies I've never heard of that make phones; then offer suggestions to see if they might incorporate ideas... unlkely sure.. but more likely than me spending six figures on a phone that a couple thousand people might buy... I'm a big opponent of Planned obsolescence and am annoyed by companies (all of them ) employing this tactic... I'd build a phone - in the exact same case - in a modular way that would allow a user to keep the 80% that works.. the screen - case - inputs - buttons - etc... and when it comes time to upgrade they'd just order a new modem - Camera module - memory Storage board - or a new Processor/ram board... I'd do the same for a laptop design as well - a completely separated peripherals controller that would plug into a removable control board - with a separate processor/ram - separate graphics - etc.. You could keep your screen forever; your case - battery size and shape would never change... universal design that anyone who cares what it looks like would hate it... You'd pick 12 inch - 15 or 18 inch - the boards would be designed to fit into the 12; so the 18 would simply let you have additional options and more peripherals or storage.. etc. I'd also design the screens to be swappable so you could throw the 12 inch onto the 18 and it would work ... (look stupid but work) - and vice versa on the 18 to 12... Same power - and interface - future proofed for 16k resolution or whatever crazy stuff is 10 years away... maybe not that crazy.. but some future proofing; I'd also offer different thicknesses of the case.. single double and quadruple thickness - you want more ports? more batteries? more storage? no problem.. all the parts will fit into any of them...

I loved your very technical post and respect what your saying as true... so true... I have to wonder about changing imei's however; I've heard rumors about that being against the law.. but the same applies to changing vin numbers on cars - or odometer readings... Here where I live there are exceptions - where you CAN change vin numbers - odometer readings - in the act of repairing a vehicle - rebuilding or creating something new from other parts... I would have to imagine that if you had broken your phones motherboard with imei #1- and you replaced it with another brand new board never used that needs programmed -- then theres nothing illegal happening as you are assigning your original number to a repaired phone...

The laws are in place to prevent criminal activity such as buying / not paying for or stealing a phone - then circumventing its blacklist by changing the number... I see this often on facebook / craigslist... Selling the Latest Greatest $1000.00 phone for 500.00; oh and by the way its going to have the wrong model number under phone info.. cough cough; not going to jail thanks.

The info you provided about VOLTE is such an important thing to understand... as a Visible customer - I believe they have something very strange going on... their phone compatibility list is TINY; and of those model numbers you can't even buy the verizon version - you have to buy THEIR version... buying the unlocked samsung version - you'll go through 10 or 15 boxes of brand new unlocked phones and 99% of the imei's will jot activate on their network.. randomly one out of 10 might.. ((same model number phones too; very strange)

Suffice to say; their service is crazy affordable... but I'm picky about my phone so I'm likely going to have to give up their service...

Thanks for your helpful post!