Unlocked Cellular Phones

Answer 1

How do you know if your cell phone is unlocked? Unlocking cell phones is a fairly new idea, but only some phone carriers allow their phones to be unlocked at all. Let us first understand a locked cell phone is.

In the United States, most carriers will lock their cell phones so that they can not be used with other carriers. According to the carriers, this keeps them from losing money from producing the phones and having them used by customers of other carriers. After a period of use, a carrier may or may not agree to unlock a phone for a customer.

Recently, it has become popular to buy phones online and to skip the wireless provider altogether. These third party sellers will often sell unlocked phones at near-full price. The down-side to this is that most of the phones that you pay full price to buy in an unlocked state are free from a wireless provider in a locked state. This alone discourages most buyers from getting an unlocked cellular phone from a third party seller.

Not all carriers support unlockable phones, however. Wireless providers on the GSM network (including but not limited to Cingular and T-Mobile) use SIM cards. These Sim cards contain all your user information and contacts (if you choose to save your contacts to the card), so whenever you change phones with these wireless providers you can simply move your SIM card to the other phone. This hardware style installation makes it very simple to change hones, and eliminates the need to have a phone unlocked.

Wireless providers on the competing CDMA network (including but not limited to Verizon, Virgin Mobile and Sprint) do not use SIM cards, but instead use a software installation. This is what keeps you from being able to use the phones on other networks. If the phone is unlocked, however, you simply have to change your recorded serial number with your mobile provider to the serial number on your unlocked phone and call your update line to have your phone programmed by your wireless provider.