North and south. Yankees and Red Sox. GSM and CDMA. Never shall the two join – until now. Some of the tireless modders over at XDA have found that Motorola’s recent hardware for Verizon features global GSM roaming bands (not unlike the HTC Rezound). With a little hacking, they found that these LTE devices could accept SIM card from AT&T and T-Mobile, making them transferable to a huge portion of American carrier customers.
The phones confirmed to work thus far are the DROID BIONIC, DROID RAZR and DROID 4, all of which use SIM cards to access Verizon’s LTE network. (The DROID RAZR MAXX should work too.) Of course, you wont’ be getting LTE speeds if you hack these phones for other carriers – in fact, you won’t even be getting 3G. Because of the difference in wireless bands, data is limited to the EDGE (2G) network. On the plus side, calls and texts work without a hitch.
The modification isn’t easy by any means, but if you’ve been poking around Android for a few years it’s certainly doable. One method includes updating the bootloader, installing a stock ROM, rooting the phone, installing a second, custom ROM, then connecting it to a PC and running a leaked Radiocomm program to switch on the inactive GSM bands for voice and data. This is all made possible because the LTE radios in Verizon phones technically use GSM bands for data, while defaulting to an older CDMA radio for 3G, texts and voice. The process simply “wakes up” the inactive bands on the LTE radio.
While this mod isn’t ideal with the lack of 3G, it does open up a lot of options if you’ve recently left Verizon or are planning to soon, and don’t want (or can’t afford) a new smartphone. EDGE should be enough for basic web surfing and things like Android’s integrated navigation, but most media applications will require a WiFi connection. Happy modding!
[via Phandroid]
Phandroid should have someone with technical knowledge write about technical details since there are quite a few bits of false info in this post including how chips in these devices work.
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Wow, I think I will get one of this phone when mod is completed.CDMA phones use to be less expensive!
All that needs to be done is some tweaking in Radiocomm, no root needed. I am using my Bionic on the T-Mobile network and still getting updates from Verizon
hey would you mind sending me a link or something on how to do this thnx
same here.. but i was wondering.. are you able to switch it back.
Can you give more info on how? I have a Droid 4 I want to use on T-Mobile but I have next to no knowledge on rooting or unlocking on the Android platform. Thanks in advanced for any help you may be able to provide
how do you the twaking with Radiocomm for T-mobile?
the bionic can only be unlocked to global and the radiocomm is made for LTE not GSM
in order to get it unlocked the Root and software required will nt work without root