My phone broke a few months ago and when I went to a local retailer. All their phone specification and the price were locked behind a QR-code. You could not make an educated purchase lol

Who was the idiot that thought this was a good idea.

Made me think of this:

https://xkcd.com/1237/ .

it's where we headed

can't you scan them with one of the display models? Or are they behind glass? Apple actually recommends if your last iOS device is lost you should go to an Apple Store for account recovery and borrow a phone from a technician because their recovery software only works on iOS, not MacOS or any other platform.

Did you know that during the setup of your android phone you can tap on a title on the first or second page which will open a QR code scanner which will let you load a custom app on your device as the owner which will have more permissions than you as the user will ever have (excluding rooting)