By James Keyes

You must first understand what a locked cell phone is in order to understand what an unlocked cell phone is. A locked cell phone can only be used with a singular cell service provider. However, an unlocked cell phone may be used with many different cell service providers.

A locked cell phone can only use a SIM card that is issued by the cellular service that provides the cell service to which the cell phone is locked to. However, an unlocked cell phone may be used with any SIM card, no matter who the cell service provider is.

The Advantages of Unlocked Cell Phones
One reason that people want an unlocked cell phone is because allows them to have better options when they select a new cell phone. For cell users one of their best options is to buy an unlocked iPhone. This way they would be able to remove the SIM card from their current cell phone and put it into the new iPhone and maintain their current cell service provider while they still got the new cell phone that they wanted.

The other reason that people want an unlocked cell phone is to keep their existing cell phone when they switch to a new cellular service provider. If you have your current cell phone unlocked when you to switch to a new cellular service provider for any reason you can replace your old SIM card with the SIM card issued by your new cellular service provider and keep your existing cell phone rather than settling for a phone that you really don't like.

The Disadvantages of an Unlocked Cell Phone

One of the disadvantages of an unlocked cell phone is that they only work with a cellular service provider s which that uses a GSM network. Cellular service providers that use a CDMA network do not use SIM cards in their cell phones and the GSM network uses SIM cards in their cell phones. Since SIM cards are required for an unlocked cell phone to function correctly, it is simply not possible for cell phones that are issued by a CDMA cellular service provider to be unlocked.

Another disadvantage to an unlocked cell phone is their expense. Cellular service providers can sell the popular, new cell phones inexpensively since they lock you into a two year contract.
The last disadvantage of unlocked cell phones is that it might result in your inability to take full advantage of specific features that are offered by a cell service provider.

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