Gadgetory

this episode of TechnoBuffalo is brought to you by lynda.com what's up everyone john r ng from TechnoBuffalo here earlier in the week i filmed a video giving my thoughts on the iPhone 6 plus two months later in that video I talked to that unlocked phones being able to be used on t-mobile on ATT and Verizon and the comments section I got a ton of questions on that so I want to go through and run through all of that tell you what you can do or not do with your locked and unlocked items so before I jump into what the iPhones can do or not do let me first say that if you're looking to pick up a unlocked Nexus 6 device the same thing is going to be true with that device with the iPhones that's also going to apply so if you wanted to get an iPhone 6 or 6 plus for this sort of sake of argument I'm just going to say iPhone 6 instead of reiterating both and you go to a carrier store you go to your Verizon store you go to your t-mobile store your ATT store and you pick up a device on either two-year contract on their next edge or jump plan your device is going to be locked and what a lock device means that's only gonna be able to work on that carrier you can't put another company SIM card and have it be able to work so that's sort of a very important thing to note know oftentimes if you buy a phone locked and you've gotten good standing with your carrier after 46 80 days different carriers different policies they will unlock your device and what unlocked essentially means that you can use it two different carriers the idea is that if you're traveling abroad you can pop in a different country SIM card and be good to go so here's where things get kind of interesting Apple sells two different versions of each phones the iPhone 6 plus they sell versions the a-15 2 to look at the back your phone you can see it there and that is the same phone you are going to get if you buy it from Verizon you buy it from t-mobile and you buy from ett sprint has a different phone that fortunately it's not going to work for I'm going to talk about for the iPhone 6 its model number a 1 5 for 9 you'll get from all three of those carriers now if you go to an Apple store and you buy the device and again you do it on a contract to the carrier device it's going to be locked if you opt to pay full price from an Apple store only your device will be unlocked well decide to pay full price for a Verizon t-mobile or AT&T you're going to get exactly the same phone it's going to be either model a one five two two for the iPhone six plus or a one five four nine for the iPhone 6 and when you do that that's where things get really really interesting again exactly the same phone which means if you want to pick up a Verizon iPhone 6 or 6 plus and the Apple store only has 18 t models we're going to pay full price you could pop in a Verizon sip card and that phone will be fully functional including all the CDMA radios all the bands there are different band supports for each phone except for the Sprint version you're getting support for every band on each with those two models so you sort of explain that a little bit more simply if you pay full price for your phone at an Apple Store your device will be unlocked you're going to get exactly the same phone you get if you buy from AT&T exactly same phone you get if you bought it for t-mobile and exactly the same thing you get if you bought it from Verizon now it's been sort of the same for a while you can use a similar phones on AT&T or t-mobile Verizon that was kind of new the CDMA radios exist in these devices and that's what Verizon uses for the 3G and sort of other legacy networks and those are all active here you get a Verizon SIM card pop it in everything's going to work and that includes voice over LTE that codes visual voicemail and everything else no need to configure different pan settings Apple will do all of that for you self to video real quick to thank our friends at lynda.com they have thousands of super easy to follow video tutorials that are taught by pros in the industry so you can learn all the things you need to learn to better yourself membership starts at just 25 bucks per month it's online so it's 24/7 access and is unlimited try lynda.com free for seven days by checking out lynda.com/rhettandlink something new that's it nothing else you have to do on your end to get your phone to work you go out to an HDD store and just request a SIM card for an iPhone they'll give you one same thing with t-mobile if you want to set up a new account with variety it's a bit tricky there systems are a little bit squirrely essentially you have to ask someone in the store to activate a new plan on another iPhone that they have because it's not going to show up in their system as a Verizon iPhone because they didn't sell it to you but rest assured it is exactly the same phone so you can ask them to activate it on the store iPhone they've got they've got an iPhone in their pocket that will work to your SIM card you pop it in and you are hundred-percent on your way and a lot of confusion about that if you pay full price for device from a carrier so you pay full price from t-mobile AT&T or Verizon store your phone will not be unlocked you can request it to be unlocked but it will not come unlock so that's the differentiating factor there if you buy it full price from Apple store you're good full price free carrier store not going to work for you so if you're waiting online try and get your new phones trying it your Verizon phone your t-mobile phone or you're 18 t phone maybe you just pick up an unlock device and be good to go I've tested it on all three carriers voice over LTE visual voicemail everything will work just as if you bought it directly from that store so bear that in mind and if you don't trust me you want to try it for yourself walk into an 18 T store look at the back of their phones they've got for their iPhone models see what the model number is either a one five two two or a one five four nine up at 6 or 6 plus walk through t-mobile store like the back of their phones welcome to Verizon sir look the back to their phones you'll see it exactly the same number app wasn't publicized this you can view the information on their website they don't really make it very well-known but it's a nice way to sort of take one phone anywhere you want to go to all three major carrier Sprint's networks a bit difference unfortunately that's not going to work but any of those three you will be good to go 100% also want travel internationally of course that will work as well again this is also the same thing that's true with the Nexus 6 and a ton of other devices so if you want to get along device pop in your SIM card and you are good to go and I say that quite a lot but you are you're just set and ready to rock which is nice to be able to try any carrier you want and I you've got that freedom so one caveat that I do want to mention you might throw a bit of a wrench in this is most Verizon phones are indeed sold GSM unlock so if you pick up a Verizon phone that maybe you got on contract or you bought from someone had it on contract you should still be able to take that phone over to t-mobile or ATT but I definitely recommend popping in one of the carrier SIM cards first to make sure that's going to work for you thank you guys for watching hope you enjoyed we love making tech videos here if you like watching as much as we love making them and just enjoy playing with the latest consumer electronics gear check us out hit the big subscribe button we got new videos coming out almost every single day we also have a channel on twitch where we play games sometimes not so well at twitch.tv slash TechnoBuffalo