Show HN: Carrier-Explode: iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy carrier settings decoded | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Carrier-Explode: iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy carrier settings decoded

carrierexplode.com

433 pointssimplyalec55 comments

Showing off carrier-explode, one of my side projects that continuously archives carrier settings for all major phone brands.

carrier-explode also contains decoders and explanations for all the common baseband configurations, etc.

There’s still quite a bit of work to be done in checking my assumptions, but the tool has already been proven useful for a few enthusiast groups.

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This is super cool. Particularly for the fact that it just showed my country's operators rather than the usual America First.

Same, there was a moment of shock to see a list from HN that started with Vietnam, followed quickly by appreciation. Good job, more like this please.

Same! I stayed on the site to explore instead of just clicking away. Seeing relevant information definitely helps engagement.

Yeah, anybody or op has any idea how to make ip/localization detection on the web? What are the current best standards there?

Cloudflare will pass the country in the request headers. Then your server can pass it to the browser if you need it there.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/htt...

I saw this linked from MacRumors during the AT&T iPhone 18 Pro Max lockup news discussions. It was interesting to see what AT&T/Apple did to try to get ahead of the issue. So far it looks like they disabled 5G Standalone mode, possibly just to prevent a bug from literally destroying the hardware (possibly only on one batch of phones).

Apple/AT&T still haven't released any kind of statement addressing the issue other than to replace affected hardware.

I straight up returned my iPhone 18 Pro Max last week. This was infuriating. I was having the baseband lock up and drop to SOS Mode on Verizon, so I got an AT&T eSIM (spent money). Same issue, full loss of connectivity 5 times a day requiring a reboot. So I got a T-Mobile eSIM (spent money). Same issue, full loss of connectivity 5 times a day requiring a reboot.

Then I read online that ONLY the Pro Max uses a Qualcomm modem and the Pro uses Apple C2. My wife's iPhone Air with C2 has great connectivity, better than my 17 Pro Max did before I swapped it for 18.

So I returned the Pro Max, got a Pro, am on T-Mobile full time and my signal strength is good now in buildings that I had 0 or 1 bar before, for years.

Fuck Qualcomm.

interesting you're not slightest angry at Apple

Why would you swap a 17 for an 18? Just curious as someone who just uses phones until they break (just retired my iPhone 12).

Why is Qualcomm your bad guy here? Do you think that was malicious, to hurt pro max?

They're not exactly fringe vendor, design bugs happen, but I thought the phone maker would be responsible for knowingly selling phones with faulty components. No?

I wonder which field is responsible for disabling the Personal Hotspot feature? About a year ago mine suddenly got disabled in the phone's UI. Since then, the only time it got enabled was when I was traveling and using a travel eSIM.

It's sad that phone companies allow carriers such anti-user things.

Did you buy your phone through the carrier?

There are apps that can act as a SOCKS proxy for limited hotspottivity. Probably mostly on Android.

> Did you buy your phone through the carrier?

No.

Mine did the same the other day. I had to toggle airplane mode on and off for it to show again. Probably just an iOS bug if I had to guess.

I have mine on an automation to turn on when I get in my car.

Sounds like a bug ?

No, there are many SIMs/plans (typically those with unlimited data) that disable the hotspot (so you can't share the data with others or even your own laptop).

seems like the relevant plist keys are CarrierEntitlements (to be removed from plist) and APN type (to be OR'd with the tether enable mask) see here for example https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Carrier_Bundle

(and BTW, you can find more in-depth articles by quickly googling that term in duckduckgo or elsewhere)

Not a new revelation, but I think its funny that there is a inflate_signal_strength_bool setting and many carriers set it to true

It almost reminds me of the 2010s era US market, when both AT&T and T-Mobile passed off their 3G coverage as "4G" even though it wasn't. If you had a suitable phone and got onto a T-Mobile tower that supported DC-HSPA (dual carrier) it was 4G-ish, but it certainly wasn't LTE.

I'm just glad we don't have the GSM vs. CDMA games from LTE onwards. Of course, that doesn't guarantee your phone supports a given carrier's frequencies.

What was quite bizarre with the 4G deceit was that at least in SF, AT&T were pretty aggressive with the real LTE rollout so they had to rebrand that to 4G LTE.

It would be great to contribute whatever's applicable to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mobile-broadband-provider-inf...

will look into this :)

Probably not a good idea if you used AI in any way to help with obtaining this info, they will ban you at the tiniest whif of you using AI

Best is to contribute the info, make sure it's accurate, and if they ban someone for contributing accurate info, let them.

GNOME is a circus.

I disagree, people should not donate their efforts to companies that hate them.

What do you use the info you have gathered for? It seems comprehensive but curious as to how you use it?

Jail broken phone and a modified plist. But expect to be axed by your network.

Can I use these settings to disable incoming calls? Does GrapheneOS have this option at the android level?

No, but you can automate rejecting an incoming call with Tasker

All of them?

You could use SpamBlocker and configure it to block everything. AFAIK you can't do this at the android level. If you don't need outgoing calls either, just use a data-only SIM.

What's more useful, or at least was a while ago, is the CA combos list - basically showing which bands can be aggregated and how.

A while ago I built a decoder for that (Qualcomm only!), it was fun and helped me improve the support of my device for my carrier.

https://github.com/denysvitali/ca-combos-editor

Are these configs read-only on the phone or is it possible to manipulate them using the data here to de/activate any service?

Depends on the OS. GrapheneOS can override a bunch of them: https://grapheneos.org/usage#carrier-settings-overrides

You can trick iOS into running different bundles for your carrier up until the most recent beta (just fixed)

A very common thing to do in Russia for instance where WiFi calling isn’t available: https://github.com/ios-bundles/CarrierSIM

Reminds me of the CDMA days when the qualcom software got leaked

How did you build the UI? Is it custom?

plain old CSS w/ svelte (and their new-ish remote functions)!

Not really sure what to do with the information, but I love the UI.

Very early-2000s

Also interested in this - what does this information unlock?

nerd tier 8. and after that you get nerd tier 9

Nice! Thank you for this public service. Phone makers & carriers should be ashamed of themselves for hiding such important configuration behind proprietary formats. If you [lurker] are a decision maker who decided to make our world this way: for shame, for shaaame!

very interesting here is my carrier for instance https://carrierexplode.com/ios/carriers/Free_fr/72.0/setting...

This is a cute reminder from the old days of PRL files on cdma

Impressive project!

For how long are you running this?

Neat. How can I contribute data?

open an issue on github about it please :)... am thinking of adding support for community feeds; ive found some cool projects like https://github.com/open-carrier-data/open-carrier-data that would also be good sources

This is very cool ngl I like it

just amazing - good work!

...and wonder what kinds of settings "restrictive regimes" will use

I could imagine stuff like com.apple.voicemail.imap use SSL => false

https://carrierexplode.com/wiki/ios/china-self-registration

mhm!

huh. look at that.

Good luck with the launch!

wow

bro this is neat

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