Just one week after President Obama signed the phone unlocking bill into law, T-Mobile has launched a phone unlocking app.
The app’s launch should be seen as partly symbolic since T-Mobile CEO John Legere has long railed against the clingy business practices of the big wireless companies. And locking a phone to a single carrier is a case in point.
The app, called Device Unlock, is now available in the Google Play store, but so far it unlocks only one kind of phone: the Samsung Galaxy Avant, a downmarket phone that launched exclusively on T-Mobile in late July.
Device Unlock lets users unlock the Avant either temporarily (for traveling abroad, perhaps) or permanently.
It’s likely that the app will extend to unlock other T-Mobile phones.
The new unlocking law requires carriers to have a system in place for unlocking out-of-contract phones by February of 2015.
Source: VB
