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Great news in what’s been a frustrating battle in the “war” against wireless companies with regards to unlocking your phone or tablet. Sparring all the nitty gritty details, U.S. wireless carriers have agreed to six principles regarding unlocking cellphones and tablets.

• Disclosure: Each carrier will have to explain its policy on unlocking clearly and concisely on its website.
• Prepaid Unlocking Policy: Carriers will unlock prepaid mobile devices upon request, no later than one year after the initial activation.
• Postpaid Unlocking Policy: Carriers will unlock or provide necessary information to unlock their devices to customers and former customers after the completion of a service contract, device financing plan or the payment of an early termination fee.
• Notice: Carriers that lock devices have to notify customers that they are eligible to unlock their devices when eligibility occurs or will automatically unlock devices remotely when they are eligible.
• Response Time: Carriers will unlock eligible devices within two business days of receiving a request.
• Deployed Personnel Unlocking Policy: Carriers will unlock mobile devices for deployed military personnel for customers in good standing.

Once it gets added to CTIA’s bylaws (which shouldn’t take too long), unlocking will again be taking place.

While you can essentially just show up at any of our locations to repair your iPhone, iPad, or Galaxy, there’s a few things that you can do for both yourself and for us to make sure the repair process is as smooth as possible.

#1) Back Up Your Device!

While it’s all but certain your data will be safe (99.99%), it really isn’t a horrible idea to back up your device. Chances are that it’s been quite a while since you’ve actually backed it up and we bet you’ve got some contacts and photos you’d hate to lose in the event your device is lost, stolen, or liquid damaged.

#2) Charge It Up (UNLESS ITS WATER DAMAGED!)

It really helps us out a lot if you’re able to charge your device before you bring it in.  If your device isn’t charged, we have to wait for it to turn on so we can test it out; even if just the screen is broken we need to make sure everything else works, that way if we break it, we fix it!

iPhones can take anywhere from 2-20 minutes to turn on and iPads can take anywhere from 5 – 30 minutes or more if the battery is dead. If you bring your device in charged, that’s a lot less waiting for us and you!

#3) Let us know if something else doesn’t work!

While we’re on the topic of testing out the phone, if you have additional issues with your device besides say, a broken screen… now is the chance to tell us. Power button click anymore? Home button doesn’t respond? These repairs essentially require the same labor as a broken screen, so we can do it in half the time. Since it’s less labor, chances are we can give you a better price if you’ve got more than one issue.