Current Events > Question on buying a new phone

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So my fiance mentioned how she wants the Note 9, and I want to surprise her with it for her birthday. Now on the Samsung site, I see there's an option to buy the phone unlocked as opposed to buying it directly through a carrier. If I finance the phone, is it unlocked right away? Meaning, could I just give her the phone and she could take it to her carrier and have it activated, then I pay off the phone monthly? Or how does it work?

I've only ever bought a phone directly through T-Mobile, and that was not a good experience. I just want something simple.
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If you finance through the carrier, you will have to use their service. If you finance through a third party, like pull a loan through your bank, hen yeah, you can.
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It would be financed directly through Samsung, which as far as I know doesn't have their own service. If I'm understanding it right, it would just be a monthly payment for 24 months at 0% APR.

I just want to make sure that's right.
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Jetblackmoon posted...

If I finance the phone, is it unlocked right away?

financing has nothing to do with it being locked / unlocked.

buy it unlocked since there are no disadvantages AFAIK to doing so and it gives you the option to switch carriers in the future.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but buying unlocked will prevent you from using WiFi calling since it's a carrier feature. That's a HUGE feature for me, so I will never buy unlocked.
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That's what I thought. I appreciate the replies.
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Super Saiyan 3 Goku posted...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but buying unlocked will prevent you from using WiFi calling since it's a carrier feature. That's a HUGE feature for me, so I will never buy unlocked.

Anyone verify this? I've never heard of this.
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So I did some research. It seems to depend both on the carrier and the phone itself. Unfortunately, she has Cricket and the Notes aren't on Cricket's list of wi-fi calling enabled phones. Like @Super_Saiyan_3_Goku said, this is a pretty big deal, so now I'm reconsidering
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Jetblackmoon posted...

So I did some research. It seems to depend both on the carrier and the phone itself. Unfortunately, she has Cricket and the Notes aren't on Cricket's list of wi-fi calling enabled phones. Like @Super_Saiyan_3_Goku said, this is a pretty big deal, so now I'm reconsidering

Yeah, I did some digging too and it looks like iPhones can be bought unlocked and taken to whichever carrier and still get WiFi Calling.

I could've bought my S8+ unlocked, but I didn't want to risk missing WiFi Calling. Don't care about carrier bloat (most of which can be uninstalled/disabled). It's THAT important.
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I just want to be totally clear. So you can still use wifi for things like the internet, you just can't use it for calls made directly through your phone? Would wifi still work for things like video chatting, calling people via Messenger, etc?

I have wifi calling on all the time on my phone, but never considered too much exactly what it does. Is it mainly to save your minutes (which a lot of people have unlimited minutes anyway) and have better call quality?
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Yes to everything you just said. WiFi calling is mostly just for poor service areas.
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