Now that cell phone unlocking is again legal in the U.S., many smartphone users may be interested in unlocking their devices, either for carrier switching purposes, or for selling their old devices that were purchased with a new contract, and thus were locked to a certain operator. Luckily, for T-Mobile subscribers, there’s an app for that which was specifically conceived by the carrier to allow users to easily unlock a handset. However, the app has one huge limitation.
Some big news out of T-Mobile tonight — it’s released a SIM unlock app that will allow a phone to work on other GSM networks. The catch? (Of course there’s a catch.) As of this moment, it’s only available for the Samsung Galaxy Avant — a low-ender that’s just a coupe hundred bucks. (We were able to install it with ease on a couple other phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S5, but unlocking was a no-go.) There are two options at play here — a temporary unlock, intended for use overseas (which generally is what you want a SIM-unlocked phone for), or a permanent unlock. TMo News earlier reported that the temporary unlock is a 30-day deal, and the permanent unlock will be subject to “certain eligibility requirements.” Of course the usual frequency caveats remain no matter what, so there’s that. No word yet if more devices will be able to take advantage of this, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
