no more unlocking phone penalty

[gerrym51]

I saw on the news that starting tody you can unlock your cell phone without penalty. I know very little about this. How does it benefit a consumer

[wa8yxm]

GordonThree wrote:
Most (android) phones are not locked these days, other than at the baseband level ... and the carrier is no help to you there, the manufacturer chose to do that (at the request of the carrier). so a sprint / att phone, even unlocked may or may not work on brand-x discount carrier (even with a SIM card) because the baseband (the radio that talks to the tower) is locked to only speak a certain encoding on a certain band that only the original carrier supports...

And as I suggested above. there are different ways the phones encode/decode the audio.. So a AT&T/T-Mobile (both use same codec) phone may not work with Sprint/Nextel or Verizon (Different codecs)

Just like an old CRT TV will work with ANALOG cable or over the air analog (Kind of rare now days)

Some would work with DIGITAL cable

But none with ATSC Digital broadcast

Your phone has to be able to Understand..

And as you pointed out,, Different frequencies as well Each service uses different radio bands for the most part, some phones can hop some can not.. And no amount of "Unlocking" can fix that.

Kind of like DirecTV v/s DirecHDTV,, the reason a dome will not get HD is ... Different freqency band (You said Baseband)

However all that aside.......

If you think you'd like to jump ship.. Check with your new provider or with your phone's manufacturer to see if it can be done with your phone.. There is hope. Wonder if my Samsung t-999 can hop to other services.. (I'm in Verizon country though I really like T-Mobile)

[1492]

Maxi Signal wrote:

emaav wrote:
Actually if your phone has a sim card you can unlock it for other carriers.. I said sim card not memory card, two different things...

Depends on what type of the network the phone is made for . A Sprint phone cannot work on a GSM network ( AT&T )

It can also be difficult to port a Sprint phone to another CDMA carrier like Verizon. They use use different frequencies, and often requires techie knowledge to update the firmware properly.

ChooChooMan74 wrote:
Hopefully, this means that people like me can Root my phone, access the bootloader, and install a custom ROM.

It depends on the smartphone. Some manufacturers lock down the bootloader, to make it extremely difficult to root. There's even some sizable rewards offered for rooting popular smartphones.

[GordonThree]

Just because Congress says this is now the law, the cell phone companies will get an injunction against it and tie it up in court until it expires or just flat out refuse and call Congress' bluff... they've paid multi-million dollar fines before, it's just a cost of doing business.

Most (android) phones are not locked these days, other than at the baseband level ... and the carrier is no help to you there, the manufacturer chose to do that (at the request of the carrier). so a sprint / att phone, even unlocked may or may not work on brand-x discount carrier (even with a SIM card) because the baseband (the radio that talks to the tower) is locked to only speak a certain encoding on a certain band that only the original carrier supports...

My Motorola RAZR and LG G2 both swap between AT&T, Verizon and Rogers SIM cards, no unlocking needed, even though both were bought from Verizon. The Motorola G I bought from Google only works with AT&T and Rogers, because Google locked the baseband on the phone. It is programmed exclude Verizon's frequencies. I can put my Verizon SIM in the phone, and it recognizes it but won't connect to the towers.

[Maxi_Signal]

emaav wrote:
Actually if your phone has a sim card you can unlock it for other carriers.. I said sim card not memory card, two different things...

Depends on what type of the network the phone is made for . A Sprint phone cannot work on a GSM network ( AT&T )

[emaav]

Actually if your phone has a sim card you can unlock it for other carriers.. I said sim card not memory card, two different things...

[ChooChooMan74]

Hopefully, this means that people like me can Root my phone, access the bootloader, and install a custom ROM.

[wa8yxm]

Big Katuna wrote:
Phones would only work on one network. Now you can use your Sprint phone on ATT. Legally.

Depends a lot on the phone.. MOST sprint phones can not understand AT&Ts network nor connect to it no matter what you do.

Same with Verizon

There are basically three different TYPES of networks, in the US, these networks are 100% not compatible with each other.

Sprint/Nextell uses one
Verizon uses another

T-Moble and AT&T both use the same type of Network (T-Mobile did it first) so these phones can use each other's networks if unlocked (or in roaming mode)

With SPrint and Verizon though it depends on the phone, Some can, some are not able to cross over no matter what you do.

[lat471]

Supposedly you lose and security measures that were incorporated in your locked phone.

[Big_Katuna]

Phones would only work on one network. Now you can use your Sprint phone on ATT. Legally.