I recently bought a T-Mobile shadow from a friend. To use this phone on my ATT cell plan I knew that I would have to unlock it. This is an easy task. I had a friend that uses the T-mobile service call and ask for the unlock code and had it within 12 hours. I put in my SIM card and the phone worked just as it was supposed to….or so I thought. When I went to change the settings for the internet and multimedia messaging I could not find where these settings where located. After some searching online I found that T-Mobile had actually hidden these settings and there was no easy way to get to them. I ended up having to go into the registry of the phone using a program on my computer and change a few values. This allowed me to get to a set of menus that T-Mobile never wanted me to find. After finally getting everything working I started wondering why US companies feel the need to do this….and why they are legally allowed to. I feel that if a person buys a phone for a few hundred dollars they should be allowed to do whatever they want with that phone. It shouldn’t be tied to a service. I know that cell companies use their phones as a way to get customers to switch to their service, but if this was not allowed they would have to attract customers with something more meaningful. Lower prices, better coverage, more features could all be used to bring customers from other carriers and would also benefit the community as a whole. I know that the US is one of (if not the only) countries where companies are allowed to do this, and feel the need.
