What is an unlocked phone?
New Page 1 An Unlocked Cell Phone is a GSM phone that can be used with different GSM compatible carriers worldwide. To get the phone working, all that is needed to do is put the carrier’s SIM card into the phone. Unlocked phones can be used within the United States using T-Mobile, Cingular, AT&T etc. and with many other GSM service providers in the world provided the frequencies on the phone match those of the carrier. On each phone’s product page there is a compatibility check for carriers to help you decide better. Also, Quad Band phones utilize all GSM frequencies and are universally supported by all GSM carriers. There are two types of Unlocked cell phones offered on our website: OEM Unlocked phones These phones come directly from the manufacturer (like Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc. from overseas) and have not been assigned to any service provider/operator. These phones come in manufacturer’s original packaging. OEM phones do not have any service provider’s logos or
Some of the GSM phones we offer are ‘unlocked’ which gives you a great degree of flexibility in the use of these phones. An unlocked GSM phone allows your phone to work with any service providers that support the same GSM technologies (e.g., AT&T Wireless, Cingular, T-Mobile, etc). A GSM phone has a removable account card, called a SIM (subscriber information module) and this SIM has a unique serial number on it. This is what identifies you to the wireless provider. You can put your SIM into any compatible phone (and pretty much all modern GSM phones are compatible with all modern SIMs). It does not care that you have changed phones, all it cares is where to find your SIM. Just as, in theory, you can put any SIM in any phone, the opposite is also true. So if you change from one GSM wireless company to another one, you do not have to change phones. But, most US wireless providers lock their phones, meaning that their phones have been programmed to only work with SIMs issued by their com
