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+--- Thread: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? (/showthread.php?tid=87534)
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Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - Mac-A-Matic - 11-10-2009
Heading out of the country next week and was advised to bring an unlocked SIM card cell phone to use. Any thoughts on where I can find these kinds of phones?
Thanks!
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - NewtonMP2100 - 11-10-2009
...you can buy them many places...amazon has some...if you have a phone plan with at&t or t-mobile.....they will often give you unlock codes for the phones you have (as long as you have been with them for a specific time period).....just tell them you will be traveling abroad....
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - Ombligo - 11-10-2009
buy a basic T-mobile pay as go phone at Target, Wal-mart, etc. You can get one for $20 and it may even have a free $25 in minutes card included.
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - DP - 11-10-2009
Just for informational purposes-what's the difference between unlocking and jailbreaking?
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - dk62 - 11-10-2009
Ombligo wrote:
buy a basic T-mobile pay as go phone at Target, Wal-mart, etc. You can get one for $20 and it may even have a free $25 in minutes card included.
That will not work - the phone will remain locked to T-mobile network and there is no leverage to ask for unlock code.
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - dk62 - 11-10-2009
Motorola RAZR V3 (International) seems to be a good deal in unlocked phones these days ($60-$70), although you may find even cheaper phones with fewer features. Search Amazon for "unlocked phones."
Also, make sure that the phone you are buying works on the bands you will be using abroad - quad-band is the best. Despite the universal GSM standard, the bands used in US and Europe are different (850 and 1900 MHZ for North America, 900 and 1800 for most other continents).
Finally, take into consideration what your pattern of calls will be. I usually just take my T-Mobile phone with its SIM card for anything shorter than 2 weeks - most of calls and text messages are to the US anyway, T-Mobile's roaming charge ($0.99/min for Western Europe) are frequently less than the other country's charges for international call. If, on the other hand, you are going to be making most of the calls within the other country, their SIM is the way to go. Of course, if you do not have a GSM-capable account in the US, this point is moot.
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - NewtonMP2100 - 11-10-2009
...yes make sure it is quad-band...i agree tht the Razr is a good cheap one to get unlocked....they sell already unlocked Razrs occasionally on some site like 1saleaday.com etc......or if you have t-mobile for at least 90 days you can buy a t-mobile prepaid Razr then unlock it through the company.....
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - Winston - 11-10-2009
dk62 wrote:
[quote=Ombligo]
buy a basic T-mobile pay as go phone at Target, Wal-mart, etc. You can get one for $20 and it may even have a free $25 in minutes card included.
That will not work - the phone will remain locked to T-mobile network and there is no leverage to ask for unlock code.
That, and some of the basic T-Mobile phones only have the US frequencies. (See dk62's post about quad band phones.) If you had one of these you would get no signal in Europe even if it was unlocked.
T-Mobile has historically been better than AT&T about unlocking phones. I think they will normally unlock a phone once you've had it 2 months, and I have heard of people getting a new T-Mobile phone unlocked after explaining that they were about to go abroad. AT&T has typically made you wait a year.
Good luck.
- Winston
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - Winston - 11-10-2009
DP wrote:
Just for informational purposes-what's the difference between unlocking and jailbreaking?
Unlocking allows a GSM phone to work with a SIM card from any mobile company. Virtually all mobile phones are sold locked to a carrier, although there are non-carrier stores which sell new unlocked phones. This happens because the carriers subsidize the price of the phone, so they want to get paid for the subsidy by having you use the phone with them.
For some phones you can get an unlock code from a third party. For others the phone can only be unlocked by the mobile company which sold the phone. For example, I have a Nokia 6133 which was originally T-Mobile. The person who sold it to me got T-Mobile to unlock the phone and I use it on AT&T.
Jailbreaking allows features which have been disabled by the mobile company to be used, for example, adding non-App Store applications to an iPhone. I did this for my Nokia 6133 by finding someone who could flash it to an uncrippled version of the phone's OS, re-enabling some features T-Mobile had disabled.
Good luck.
- Winston
Re: Sourcing unlocked SIM cell phone? - DP - 11-10-2009
Thanx, Winston.