I’ve recently broken my palm pilot and mp3 player, so i need a replacement for them, so it hit me that one of these new smartphones would be ideal, since i would get all the functionality i need, plus i could ditch my cell phone as well, and gain a few nifty tools.
But… I hate cell phone contracts, and don’t use my phone enough to warrant the expense anyway, so I wanted to get a phone and use it with prepaid time.
My understanding is that if I get an unlocked phone, and use my current phones SIM card in it, the phone company won’t be able to tell the difference, or care that I’ve done so(provided that the phone uses the same radio frequencies). Is this right? Is it so easy to swap a phone out?
They can tell the difference because every handset has an ID number (IMEI) which is sent with every call. But that is not the question you need to ask. The question is why would they care what handset you were using. For them the SIM is what counts. That is what identifies you as their customer and what gets them the money from your pocket to theirs. I can’t see why they would care what handset you were using to make those calls.
The advantage to unlocked phones comes when you leave your home territory.
A locked phone typically requires you to use a SIM from the company that sold you it. This makes no difference when you are in your home territory, using the network and services of your home phone company.
If you leave your home territory, it’s different. Your phone will be a guest on a foreign network. You have the choice of using the SIM from your home company and paying the Very Expensive Roaming Rates to use the foreign network as a guest, or putting a SIM from the foreign network into your unlocked phone and using the foreign network much more inexpensively as a local. This means you have to forward your own number to the new foreign number associated with the foreign SIM, but you only need to do that once and the savings is worth the bother.
The GSM system was designed to facilitate this kind of SIM swapping. Phone companies like the revenue from roamers, however, so they try to discourage such activities.
The other reason a phone company might lock a phone is ‘provider subsidy’. This lets them sell an expensive phone, such as, say, an iPhone, for a fraction of its real cost, while signing the new customer to a contract and recovering the cost of the phone through the multiple payments of the contract. If you look at the cost of an unlocked iPhone 3G, it’s around $600 or $700–but I paid $200 for mine. And signed a contract.
So, for the OP, using an unlocked phone at home doesn’t make much of a difference, and buying an unlocked phone might be more expensive. The savings comes while travelling.
Edit: and, it allows arrangements not desired by the phone company, such as using an expensive phone on a non-contract basis. If you pay full price for an unlocked phone, so that there is no subsidy, you IMHO should be allowed to use it with any SIM on the network. But who can say what a particular phone company might do?
In the same situation, I did exactly what you have suggested in the OP. I purchased a smartphone on eBay and found a freeware unlocking tool online. I then bought a prepaid SIM (T-Mobile is the best deal, 1000min for $100, minutes expire in 1 yr) and have been enjoying all the great smartphone features (except CDMA of course) without a contract or any hassle. When I need to make a call or send a text it is there, but otherwise I just have a Windows Mobile PDA/camera/MP3 player.
As far as using it as an MP3 player, one thing to look out for is the SD/SDHC compatibility. Some phones are limited to 2GB SD cards.
If you’re more comfortable with Palm, there are a variety of websites where you can get unlocked Treo 650s for ~$100-$150 and sometimes even 700s for the high end of that price range. I haven’t used a Palm device since Palm OS 4 so I have no help there.