Buying my first smartphone? need advice please.?

[prado]

Hello, im buying a tmobile samsung galaxy s2 from craigslist for 450$ the seller said its brand new. I have never had a smartphone before so dont know much about them. so i have a few questions.

1)how do i make it work i just put my tmobile sim from my old phone?
2)if i wanted to changed my provider later on could i get the phone unlocked later from a shop?
3)what advice do you have for me that i should look into?

i dont want to give my money just to find something wrong later on.
please help,thanks.
not an official phone shop. theres post on craigslist that offer to unlock smartphones for 25$.
is the galaxy s2 unlockable?

 

[DakotaBanas]

1) yes. just change the SIM card out. Sometimes though sim cards are buried deep inside the phone and are unaccessable.


2) A shop won't unlock a phone for you, you'll have to buy one already unlocked from eBay or amazon.

3) the instruction manual.

 

[jb616]

1. when setting up an android mobile you will just stick the sim in and turn it on, after that you will need to make a google account to access the appstore and in some cases you will need to make an account for the phone manufacturer, e.g a motorola blur account to help you find your phone if it gets lost and access other features of the phone, though i do not know if samsung will ask for an account to bee created.
2. if you want to change your service provider you can go to a tmobile store and ask for it to be unlocked, usually there is a fee, or you could do a google search to see if you can find some unlock codes, also the galaxy s2 has quad band HSDPA meaning it will work with any of the service providers out there at the moment on 3g.
3. usually some fun things to do are looking through the huge collection of apps android have to offer, also if your into techy stuff you can root your device to allow you to do things like overclocking the cpu and editing the boot menu, also looking at some launchers on the app store is also fun, the launchers are what you see on your homescreen, apples launcher is just the 4 apps along the bottom with the other apps at the top, you can change your launcher to look like windows phone 7, apple or even windows 7 if you want

edit: yes the galaxy s2 is unlockable. here is a link to a tmobile unlock code on ebay http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Unlock-Code-T-Mobile-Samsung-galaxy-S2-i897-i997-includes-not-found-/110781424909?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item19cb16650d#ht_2048wt_1139
but if they do offer to unlock then it would be easier if they did it, though it isnt too hard to do, its just gives you that reassuring feel that its been done by a professional so you dont have to worry about knowing how to do it yourself