Buying Galaxy S9 direct from Samsung-Unlocked or Locked to AT&T?

If you buy your phone unlocked then at&t is only obligated to provide you service and not hold your hand through the whole setup lol.

Take your old phone to an AT&T service center. They will give you a new (smaller) sim card for free. Make SURE the sime card and phone IMEI are registered properly. Don't walk out of the store unless your new phone's data connection says LTE. (Assuming they have it in your service area.) You'll be quite happy with the Samsung branded phone, as you will not have the bloatware and pretty much everything that is missing can be downloaded from the Play Store (as another app), if desired. If you do international traveling, the unlocked phone with dual sim capability will be a real benefit.

Tom

West Palm Bch

Personally, I use YouMail-it works great! Also has spam filtering.

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@tsberry901 wrote:

Take your old phone to an AT&T service center. They will give you a new (smaller) sim card for free. Make SURE the sime card and phone IMEI are registered properly. Don't walk out of the store unless your new phone's data connection says LTE. (Assuming they have it in your service area.) You'll be quite happy with the Samsung branded phone, as you will not have the bloatware and pretty much everything that is missing can be downloaded from the Play Store (as another app), if desired. If you do international traveling, the unlocked phone with dual sim capability will be a real benefit.

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Samsung unlocked phones still have plenty of bloat all on their own.  Most of which can now be uninstalled.   The AT&T S8 And S9 series have almost no carrier bloat compared to older models.  

Unlock code for Samsung tab with T-Mobile sims

I wish I had read this BEFORE taking advantage of Amazon Prime day. Now, I must return the unlocked phone, pay $200 more for same phone at AT&T, and sign a 2 year contract, to get the features in my plan that I've had for years! 

I use my phone for business. My new unlocked Galaxy S10+ will not show who texts are from, with AT&T. It will only show the phone number. This is the biggest game stopper I found immediately. I'm sure there is much more that's not available. I've also spent over 15 hours on the phone with AT&T and Samsung. If they understand what I'm saying, they can only read a script that never helped. Finally, I was told by both Samsung and AT&T, that many of AT&T's features will never be available on an unlocked phone.

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@onasus wrote:

I wish I had read this BEFORE taking advantage of Amazon Prime day. Now, I must return the unlocked phone, pay $200 more for same phone at AT&T, and sign a 2 year contract, to get the features in my plan that I've had for years! 

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AT&T is a no contract carrier.  You can buy a phone at full price and be a month to month, postpaid customer.  Just as I have for 5 years.