T-Mobile - Branding and locked?

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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OK, so I'm yet another person taking a look at the Desire.
I'm currently on a SIM only deal with Vodafone.
Some of the T-Mobile prices look good - even paying £100+ for the handset and then a cheap £15 per month contract is a potential.

I have been on every single network in my time except T-Mobile.
Are their phones locked or do they provide unlocked phones?
Is there likely to be any T-Mobile branding on the phone?
Apple are a big enough company to say "No, you may not brand the iPhone".
But HTC - maybe they aren't.

Cheers.
 
From what I have read they are all branded on T-Mobile and if sourced from T-Mobile they are locked. If you go through someone else like CPW/Mobilephonesdirect chances are you will get an unbranded/unlocked handset.
 
from past experience with my G1, their Android handsets are network locked and have a T-Mobile web'n'walk shortcut installed that takes you to the web'n'walk homepage.

Not sure if this was any different in the later Android phones, but to be honest it doesn't bother me too much personally. Network locking I can cope with too, although I can see this being an issue for some.
 
Is the hardware branded in anyway?
Locked to T-Mobile with T-Mobile branded software I can cope with.
However I'd rather not have T-Mobile badges etc on the physical hardware.

At some point they will be unlockable - so loced isn't an issue to start with.
I just don't want T-Mobile branding on the physical hardware.
 
Small T-Mobile logo below the ear speaker on the G1. Fairly unobtrusive to be honest.... don't know what's on the Desire though.

T-Mobile unlocked the G1 for me for about 14 quid. Other places doing it slightly cheaper, but I wasn't happy sending phone details to them for them to then send me an unlock code.
 
From what i've read the Desire won't have any (T-Mobile) branding on the hardware itself. I'd wait for someone to actually get their hands on one if you want to know for sure tho. The G1 had the branding but they were calling it the 'T-Mobile G1' from the start, whereas they're calling this the HTC Desire.

I imagine they'll keep the branding on the boot screen + the web and walk app, but you'll probably be able to root and replace the boot screen if you want to.
 
As been said, CPW tend to just have generic handsets and use them for all networks i.e. they are unbranded...

Its where I will be going for my Desire :)
 
You could always email to doucle check. I should imagine that it would come with T-Mobile firmware and it would be locked to the network.

I'd also advise getting a T-Mobile payg sim card just to check what the signal is like in your area. You can ususally get them free online :). At least that way you won't be locked into a contract on a network that doesn't have signal in your area.
 
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