Now that unlocking your smartphone, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t unlock yours, right? In fact, that’s correct: unlocking your smartphone provides you, the owner, more power over your device. So if you can, here are three major reasons why you should take advantage of the option: It Makes It Usable Internationally... Without Ridiculous Fees To attract customers, carriers typically subsidize the purchase cost of a device when a user signs up for a new two-year contract and lock the subsidized phone to their service. For example, if you purchase an HTC One (M8) from AT&T without a contract, the device would cost $669. If you sign up for a two-year contract, AT&T will sell you the phone for $199, but the device will be locked by the carrier and will only work on its network.

Did you know that as of Jan 26, 2013, it's 'illegal' to unlock your phone? Of course you did. How To Unlock A Phone From The Carrier. You've seen the 'Sky is falling!' Headlines It's not quite that simple.

That also means that if you travel internationally, you can’t just switch out the AT&T SIM card for a local one—it won’t work. Instead, you’ll have to pay AT&T to use the phone internationally through the carrier’s partners. This almost always costs much more than buying a cheap SIM card, partly because mobile service in most of the world is much cheaper than in the United States, and partly because carrier partnerships cost the end user a lot of money. Of course, if your smartphone is locked, then you don’t have a choice in the matter. It Lets You Switch Carriers Can I Buy Unlocked Phone From At&t. ... Without Buying a New Phone Tired of your carrier but like your phone? Before smartphones, this wasn’t a problem; just cancel the service, get the appropriate SIM card, and sign up for a new service plan with the new carrier.