Verizon wireless phones range from classic candybar designs to clamshell form factors. With Apple’s recent foray into the Verizon catalog of handsets, however, customers of the wireless communications giant now have more chatting choices than ever before!

To be sure, the cellular handset is just a commodity now and consumer probably don’t think in terms of Verizon wireless phones no matter what the roster of available brands are. It’s almost like choosing laundry detergent, with everybody offering the same general feature-sets on their phones and the same general terms and conditions for their plans. The market is vastly different from what it used to be just five years ago, never mind ten or even twenty, when such handsets were status symbols! Nowadays such electronics is affordable to one and all and it’s the not having one that would seem unusual.

That’s why many don’t care about something like Verizon wireless phones – they just want something that allows them to talk, first and foremost, carrier be damned! And so carriers have taken to “locking” up their phones (that should be “their” phones, really – more on this in a moment), recognizing that customers have no brand loyalty anymore. Correct: the phone is rendered inoperable when customers switch service providers! You would imagine that since the phone is bought and paid for, it belongs to you, and you can determine which service provider to use it with.

Wrong! Cellular network companies argue that since they subsidize part of the cost of the phone, making it cheaper when purchased as part of a subscription plan compared to being bought separately, they have the right to lock their phones – yes, “their” phones. Curiously, there has been no class-action lawsuit against such a potentially anti-competitive policy, one that’s long been adopted by all the carriers in the industry. It must be the presence of massive and/or numerous legal loopholes, though it’s still a little puzzling how tobacco companies can be defeated but not cellular carriers who disable people’s phones!

But all hope’s not los; there’s a way around the onerous policies. In many cases, a phone can be unlocked by just entering a certain code into it!