Gadgetory

owning a great smartphone shouldn't means signing away two years of your life to a carrier if you're a citizen of the world who's accustomed to picking up contract free SIM cards and whatever exotic destination you found yourself in what you need is an unlocked phone they're more expensive than a subsidized phone but you hate being under the heel of your carrier you can't put a price on freedom so here are the top five unlock Android phones courtesy of senior editor Jessica dull Court and associate editor Lynn Locke starting off at number five the Samsung Galaxy s4 Google Play edition or GPE yes you heard me right the s4 s5 might be the latest and greatest but if you can sacrifice a fraction of an inch on screen size the s4 is still an outstanding phone yet stock Android 4.2.2 unsullied by Samsung's TouchWiz improvements quad-core processor 5 inch 1080p screen and a replaceable battery that's pretty easy to come by 50 bucks ain't cheap for last year's phone number for the Sony Xperia Z too hard to track down in the US may be impossible to track down in the US but arguably the best phone on this list when it comes to specs 2.3 gigahertz quad-core processor 20 megapixel camera waterproof is dust proof and it even records 4k resolution video costs around 600 pounds in the UK which translates approximately into way more money than you ever want to spend on a phone that's why it's here at number four coming in at number three the Motorola MOTO G here's the flipside of the coin modest specs no LTE and the camera is unusually bad but the price is just $179 unlocked and unsubsidized that is a crazy steal for a name-brand phone running Android 4.3 and a 4.5 inch screen and if you squint hard it kind of looks like a moto X but for a few hundred more go with number 2 the Google Nexus 5 350 bucks gets you the best most affordable Nexus phone yet LTE compatible Android 4.4 KitKat and deep integration with Google now it's a slightly better camera than you'll find on the Moto G but not by much if you're a hardcore Android fan though nothing's gonna satisfy your google fix better than this guy but before we compromise on camera quality how about number one HTC One m8 Google Play edition the latest and greatest from HTC packs the best sound a beautiful design great camera a Snapdragon 801 processor and a pure version of Android KitKat it's a killer phone that will turn heads and have you grinning all day but here's the thing it's $800 you can get two Nexus fives for the same amount of money and still have money left over for that prepaid Parisian SIM card plus it's Paris and no one's gonna judge you for loving two phones at the same time so there you go five unlocked phones that will liberate you from your carrier and keep you nimble as you travel the globe for more phone recommendations visit cnet-dot-com-slash-loaded comm donald bell thanks for watching