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Is this for just one or several OnePlus models?

If so, is this 'fuse' per-planned in the hardware? My understanding is cell phones take 12 to 24 months from design to market. so, initial deployment of the model where this OS can trigger the 'fuse' less one year is how far back the company decided to be ready to do this?

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Lots of CPUs that have secure enclaves have a section of memory that can be written to only once. It's generally used for cryptographic keys, serials, etcetera. It's also frequently used like this.

Fuses are there on all phones since 25+ years ago, on the real phone CPU side. With trusted boot and shit. Otherwise you could change IMEI left and right and it's a big no-no. What you interact with runs on the secondary CPU -- the fancy user interface with shiny buttons, but that firmware only starts if the main one lets it.

Otherwise you could change IMEI left and right and it's a big no-no.

You can still change the IMEI on many phones if you know how to.

This is in the Qualcomm SOC chip, so it's not something that has to be designed into the phone per se.