All standard phones models leave the factory unlocked. Operator-specific models, that is models that are manufactures specifically for operators like Cingular or Vodafone, etc, do leave the factory locked as instructed by the operator. Standard phones that are sold by operators are locked before selling. In both cases the reason is that they will probably sell the phone at very low price, probably losing money on the phone sale itself, but they expect to recover that money from your use of their airtime in one calling plan or another. So to stop people from buying cheap phones with one company and taking them right away to use with another company , the selling company locks them so they can't be used with another chip. Of course by now you know this isn't bulletproof.
I have a Motorola V525 , you won't find this model on any motorola catalog because it was manufacture specifically for Vodafone. A cellphone distributor here in Honduras somehow got a hold of a batch of these phones at the subsidized cost, unlocked them and sold them to the public (including myself) for a very low price. That's why my phone has a Vodafone logo on it.
>From what the cellphone techs have told me, Nokia phones have better overall quality than Motorola. They know this because fewer Nokia phones come to their shops for warranty repair or replacement than Motorola phones. Samsung, Sony-Erickson are on the same category as Nokia. And yet I have a Moto phone, go figure! (actually I wanted a cheap phone with a camera and bluetooth conectivity, so this one was it).
I know that Cingular does in fact locks the phones but I was told that one operator didn't i don't know if it was verizon or T-mobile. In any case you can just buy a chip here and try out the phone with the new chip, if it works then great, if not then you take the phone to be unlocked.
Angel
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