The OnePlus 11 is currently a flagship item and it’s no wonder people have been buying units wherever they can. This is what led to a discovery on the Russian 4PDA forum and a further investigation into what appears to be a region locked OnePlus 11 unit.
Said phone was from China and worked fine for about two weeks, after which a message popped up that roughly translates to: “You are using a region-customized phone. Its calling features are limited in your region. Please contact customer service for support.”. Subsequently, the phone limited its calling functionality. It’s unclear whether or not cellular data has also been affected.
Region lock alert
Regardless, the 4PDA community has done some research. The TeleService.apk app (com.android.phone) generated the warning message. The community then managed to unearth configuration files that actually list the MMCs of the regions where the region lock behavior is triggered. Right. It appears that the restrictions only apply when using a Chinese unit in one of the markets listed. The list is quite long and available at the link via below, but some of the target countries include India, Italy, Russia and Brazil.
These are all countries where OnePlus is selling the global version of the OnePlus 11, a fact that makes the targeted regional blocking system a bit more sensible. 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, though. The community also found a string within an OplusEngineerNetwork.apk that suggests users can remove the region lock by entering a 16-digit unlock code. Presumably, this code could be obtained on a device-by-device basis by contacting OnePlus Support. However, support may still be reluctant to unlock phones that aren’t purchased through official Chinese channels but rather third-party stores. This part is still unconfirmed.
Another hypothesis that the source makes is that this particular type of network blocking could also be applied to certain Chinese units from Oppo and Realme. This too remains to be confirmed. But, needless to say, that would be an unfortunate development.
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