Note for Americans: here WhatsApp is the de facto communication standard. Literally nobody uses SMS/iMessage/Facebook messenger/signal. And carriers still charge 2 euro for a MMS which completely kills iMessage/RCS (if accidentally send MMS, it's expensive)
I switched phones and instead of copying manually /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp I used the new feature of pairing via qr code.
Besides that's a not very well designed feature (you need to start transfer on the old phone before logging in the new phone) because they really want to store unencrypted backups on Google drive, the transfer completed in a short time.
Maybe too fast, I was expecting at least one hour to transfer the 5000 photos 10gb, instead it completed in 20 seconds.
So I told myself, ok photos not transferred, I'll just do that manually and directly put them in the photo archive on my PC rather than keep them mixed with all the "happy holidays" trash.
I browse the old phone to /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp and... It's empty. Wiped clean after the "successful" transfer process!
Luckily I had set syncthing (the fork on fdroid, the one on play store doesn't have access to whole storage) to have a full overnight backup! On my PC I still had all the photos, almost deleted too as I noticed that I didn't set the "trash can" option
Conclusion: go to download syncthing fork from fdroid and have a safety net from mistakes like this
that's now, 15 years too late to revert the "i need to be careful or the carrier will fuck my wallet" mindset that everyone got
Even if my carrier tried charging me for a MMS, fools on me if they do succeed since I'm PAYG.
If they manage to fool you into paying for them? Fool on you for signing up to contracts that allow that behaviour. And the fact that you're looking for a solution to this is very "blinkered".
It depends by the network.
Here Tim and Vodafone have teams of lawyers and professional scammers to brainstorm new ideas to extract more money from users.
For example, a few years ago they decided that the monthly plans should not renew every earth month, but every moon cycle. Can you imagine to rewrite the billing software to charge users every moon cycle instead of every month? A nightmare but they stole billions, because there are 13 moon cycles in a year instead of 12 months.
Another scam that they have on PAYG plans (literally everyone here is on PAYG plans because otherwise there's a 10 euro month tax derived from the 70s where mobile phone service was a luxury and not a necessity) is that they allow overdrafts up to 2 euro, but with a 2 euro fee. And they do plans like 10.90 monthly but only allowing paying credit in multiple of 10. So you might be 90 cents short, but they would first let you go in negative credit, then charge you 2 euro "overdraft fee" next time you add credit.
So as a population we are always vary of phone carriers. We are always on the defensive "OK, where's the catch, how would they fuck me"
Luckily I now have a plan from a swiss owned carrier that would take from my credit card the exact money that is needed to renew the PAYG plan. So the credit is always zero and there's no way that I'm spending more than I should
Indeedys!
Exactly what I do and I feel the MVNO market here in the UK has kept things sane for quite a few years now. The problem exists when people take out "contract deals" and get themselves into "credit".
Also the fact we can now text our current operator for a PACode means we can jump between PAYG deals, monthly.