@prologic@twtxt.net in this case it isn’t vendor lock-in. I believe they do it because the carrier “eats” the costs (the interest part of the instalments). The phones are fully unlocked.

I will return the two we got for parents, and re-buy them again, this time on an instalment plan. Why pay $2,000 up front when you can split the cost in convenient monthly payments, all interest free, right?

“Move to iOS” app continuously refused to run as intended and expected, so couldn’t migrate mum’s Android based phone data. Most of her stuff is on a Google account, but not the SMS/MMS/RCS messages. Haven’t found a way to export, then import those into iOS.

She isn’t too happy having to keep the old phone just for the messages. Need to find a way to go through them, export multimedia attachments, and import them into iOS. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I am not letting her know yet. 😅