Questions Regarding Unlocking/Switching Carriers

[joenot443]

Hello all, first and foremost I hop you've all been having a Merry Christmas and are enjoying your holidays.

Although I am new to these forums, and cell phone unlocking as a whole; I am not new to other unlocking scenes, I'm an active member of both the PSP homebrew scenes, as well as the iPhone/iPod Touch jailbreaking communities, so you won't have to spell out instructions for me, rather I'm simply looking for advice.

Earlier this week, my cellphone was crushed under a chair, rendering it useless (younger sister). Although the cellphone itself is broken, the SIM card is fine. My cell company is Rogers, and my permanent place of residence is Canada, however I am vacationing in Florida currently, and have been without a phone since the incident. My question is if I were to buy a no-term cell phone here, namely the Samsung A177 from Best Buy, would I be able to unlock it using an unlock code, replace the firmware to a vanilla Samsung version, then replace the SIM card with my current one, would I be able to use it in the same way as my old one, with the same talk and text plan which I'm still paying for? If not, what would my best course of action be? I would normally just buy one from a Rogers store, but obviously being in Florida, there aren't any.

Any comments or advice are greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

[gregsmith59]

Any unlocked relatively current GSM phone should work with your SIM in both the US and Canada, as the frequencies and technologies are the same for GSM. T-Mobile 3G uses different frequencies than AT&T/Rogers 3G.

You need to research unlock codes, as they are model specific - some easy, some hard. If you are buying the phone from Best Buy it is possibly already unlocked if not manufacturer-branded.

I haven't a clue about flashing firmware.