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How can I unlock a Verizon Samsung Galaxy S4 mini?

I have a Verizon Samsung Galaxy S4 mini that I'd like to unlock. It is no longer under contract, and the ESN (IMEI) is no longer active. After doing a lot of research, I'm finding information regarding BYOD that is confusing and conflicting.

Verizon claims that they do not lock any of their Android phones. But I'm seeing that phones used on their network are not compatible with Sprint, and some other providers.

Can someone please share some info that is comprehensive and accurate? Thanks in advance!

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  • 4 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    You cannot use your phone under sprint or other CMDA carriers. You can use some CDMA re-sellers such as Page Plus. For GSM carriers such ast AT&T, T-Mobile and their resellers are OK to use. Verizon phones should be unlocked out of the box. You can just put in whatever sim card you come up with.

    There are some considerations you may need to check. The frequencies among different carriers are different. You might check to see how your specific phone has radios for some but not other frequencies. I posted a link below to explain this further. This should only extend to your data services though. You will need to configure data to work properly if it doesn't auto-configure, in any case.

    Search for "Cellular frequencies in the US - Wikipedia" for info about carrier frequencies and search for your specific model phone and it's specs. Note that you should get your specific model number and not the name. For example you would search for Samsung sgh-t999, instead of Samsung Galaxy S3.

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