7 Reasons to Unlock Your Phone Right Now

So you’ve heard everyone talking about how cool it is to have an unlocked phone, but you either don’t know what that means, or don’t really understand all the benefits you can get out of unlocking your phone.  If you’re not yet thinking to yourself, “I should unlock my phone,” then you should really read this list carefully.

7. Foreign Travel

Americans tend to be the people least familiar with unlocking their phones. Why? Because our choices for cell providers is always a balancing of the lesser of evils. AT&T gets a lot of dropped calls, Verizon’s coverage is less than adequate, and T-Mobile, well, I won’t even get into them.

Many Americans are first introduced to the world of unlocking when they’re headed out of the country and realize that their standard phone activities are going to start costing exorbitant amounts of money.

So you’ve got an AT&T cell phone, for instance, but you’re going to be backpacking around Europe or going to Asia on business. You’d rather not buy a new phone, right? Unfortunately, your phone is locked so you’re probably going to have to do exactly that unless you unlock your phone. By unlocking your phone, you’ll have the ability to get your hands on a foreign SIM card and switch it out while you’re traveling without having to buy a new phone.

6. Stick It to the Man

Let’s consider this alternate universe: you buy your PC from your ISP (Comcast, for instance) at a subsidized price. If you move to a place without Comcast, or you just want to change ISPs, too bad, because they’ve rigged your computer such that it’s unusable with other service providers.

Ridiculous, right? Unfortunately, that’s exactly the current situation with cell phone providers.  Talk about a violation of digital capitalism.

The cell phone providers have decided that it’s in their best interest to subsidize the cost of cell phones, so in order to

recover their costs, they’ve decided to lock the phones to their service. Who knows — maybe if the cell phone providers weren’t all paying $500 for their phones, unlocked phones might come down in cost.

Point is, anyone who believes in openness with respect to their hardware should be unlocking their phone right now.

5. Take advantage of better rates

One of the sweetest advantages of unlocking your phone is that it gives you the ability to shop around. Say for instance you’re someone who doesn’t use all their minutes, but you’ve got yourself an exclusive T-Mobile phone. Wouldn’t it be nice to ditch T-Mobile and take advantage of some rollover minutes at AT&T? You can, if you unlock your phone.

Same holds true for rate shopping. Maybe one provider offers better rates per call, or has a better broadband plan. Don’t you want the freedom to explore other providers? I do.

4. Multiple SIMs, One Phone (SIM Switching)

Many business people use two phones: one for leisure and one for business. If you unlock your phone, you can simply carry around multiple SIMs for different purposes and swap them out at-will.  In many places, you can simply go to the mall and purchase a prepaid SIM with no questions asked.  Alternatively, you can swap out your phones to keep your multiple families separate.  Kidding. Sort of.

This perk also allows makes your life easier if you’re traveling through multiple countries / continents. Just keep swapping your SIMs as you travel to obtain the local rates.

3. New Functionality

Some phones technically sport the ability to use two SIMs at once, but cell providers cripple this functionality almost across the board. Again, it goes back to the whole idea of not wanting the competition to infringe on the phone they subsidized to lure you in.

The same holds true for GPS or push-to-talk on some phones.  For instance, some BlackBerry phones natively support GPS and push-to-talk, but it’s crippled by Verizon and other wireless providers.  Unlocking your phone can often re-enable this functionality.

2. Better Resale Value

Say it’s time to change phones. You’d like to sell your old phone and recoup some of the costs, right? Well, who’s going to buy your old phone if it’s not unlocked? Only people who happen to have the same cell provider as you. Who’s going to buy it if it IS unlocked? Anyone in the world with a cell provider using the same architecture as your phone.

So what does this broader potential customer base mean for you? (1) You have a better chance of selling your phone at all; and (2) You have a better chance at selling your phone at a substantially increased value. Remember economics? Supply v. Demand and all.

1. It’s Easy (And Cheap)

Yes, I said cheap rather than free.  “Why should you I pay for the cow when I can get the milk for free?” I hear you wondering.  Well, in the likely event that the milk is poisoned and kills you since you got it from such a shady dealer, who is your significant other going to sue?  Okay, maybe a bad analogy, but you get the point.

There are plenty of stories around the web about people bricking their phones after using some “free” unlock codes.  I say “free” in quotes because paying $500 for a new phone certainly is not free.

That said — why not consider checking out our store at UniquePhones, which offers you a guarantee that your phone will be unlocked properly and will not suffer any damage so long as you follow our easy to follow instructions.  Just read through our testimonials on almost any phone and you will see that we provide a quality service to our customers, boast an exceptionally fast delivery.  There are many free services, but none can compete an unlocking guarantee.  Your phone is expensive: why play Russian Roulette with the chance of bricking it when unlocking is so affordable and safe?