I’ve been wanting to buy a new smartphone for quite a while but haven’t been able to afford the one i want.I have found sites that carry the phones unlocked and a heck of alot cheaper.Is it illegal to buy them that way?
No. unlocked phones are completely legal. However, be aware that there are a lot of phoney phones out there. If the price is too good . . . .
Browsing Posts in unlocked phones
I would like to buy an unlocked phone, but im unsure if it will work well with my service plan.
It varies but mainly depends on what country you are from. I got a mobile from the UK that was unlocked but I could not reset the setting to allow me to view WAP pages. So I would be careful, also you may not be able to access some features your mobile operator has. Because of this I now will not buy an unlocked mobile because the setting are all predetermined by the previous mobile provider and need to be changed.
I found unlocked razr’s on ebay, they are unlocked cingular phones (if where they are unlocked from makes a difference), I really have no idea how unlocked phones work.
Of course! Unlock means that it’s shackles from it’s carrier is removed, and it will accept any simcard. But unlock phones DO NOT work On CDMA Branded carrier such as verizon, sprint, and virgin mobile usa. i’m not really sure if Virgin mobile Canada uses GSM, but in europe it does.
I’ve seen company phones that say theyre "unlocked" and they’re more expensive than other replicas of the same phone obviously…but whats the diffference? If you buy the phone, can you use it with at&t or anything?
With unlocked phones u can use them with any sim card…for instance i have three different sim cards cause i travel a lot(one for Bermuda,one for New jersey and one for Virginia) and jus one unlocked phone…wheneva i’m in bermuda i use that sim card in my phone..and wheneva i’m in jersey i use that sim card…etc.
I am looking to buy the Unlocked version of Treo PRO by Palm for my AT&T cell phone plan.
How exactly do these work? AT&T has sim cards, but Sprint doesn’t. Correct?
Somebody, PLEASE explain this to me. 
A Sprint phone cannot be used on the AT&T network. In the US, there are two different, incompatible cell phone networks, GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile) and CDMA (Sprint and Verizon). Phone made for one type of network cannot be used on the other.
I have Virgin Mobile and I would like to know if I could buy an unlocked phone (env maybe?)and use it with with my current network. If so, is there certain phones that work better unlocked than others?
You can, but it’s not easy, and it’s likely to fail. Virgin is an MVNO of the Sprint network, which is CDMA. You can’t unlock CDMA phones. You can try to have it reprogrammed, but Sprint is notorious for only allowing approved devices on its network, and that includes MVNOs (sorry for all the acronyms).
unlocked phones usually refer to those on GSM networks, which in the U.S. means T-Mobile and AT&T. They use SIM cards. CDMA networks like Sprint, Alltel, and Verizon do not use SIM cards.
We have a cell place where you can only buy their phones with sim cards but somebody bought a phone that they could activate. Is it a phone that is GSM unlocked?
I mean non major ones unlike Alltel or T-Mobile. It’s a small cell company.
The purpose of an unlocked GSM phone is that you can put the sim card into the phone and use it with any carrier, big or small, provided that the phone supports the needed bandwidths for the local carrier, 850/1900mhz for North America 900/1800mhz most of the world and 2100mhz Japan/ Singapore. Be aware that Alltel is a CDMA carrier not GSM so an unlocked phone would not work for them.
im going to las vegas in late october to attend a wedding. and i want to buy a unlocked phone. is there any store in las vegas that specializes in unlocked phones?
I don’t think so. Why not just take your own cell phone? That’s what we do.
I got Boost Mobile service a while ago. I tried to use the Boost Mobile Sim Card in my three unlocked phones, but it did not work. Does anyone has a suggestion about what to do to make it work on my unlocked/non-Boost Mobile phones? Or does this sim card work exclusively with Boost Mobile?
Boost and Nextel phones use the same type of sim technology called iden. It is completely incompatible with unlocked Att/Tmobile phones which use what are called gsm sims.
You can use your Boost sim in most Nextel phones without unlocking. But your Boost sim will never work in any gsm unlocked phones like the iphone, etc. And vice versa. Their sims will not work in Boost phones even if you unlock it either.
Technically they should as long as they have the appropriate frequencies, but I have heard from some people that they could be a little sluggish. Is that true?
I really do not like the phones of any of the carriers in the market and was thinking of just buying an unlocked phone.
An unlocked phone will work as good as a locked phone. Most GSM phones are unlocked in Europe and Asia and they work flawlessly.
