Comment Re:What will REALLY be big news... (Score 2, Informative) 233
It's a "carrier-neutral" chip, so you can activate the device on whatever carrier you like - GSM or CDMA.
Unlocking a phone makes it carrier neutral. What you're talking about is being communication standard neutral simply by supporting multiple standards, but that is increasingly a non-standard (CDMA was largely a North America only thing, but is increasingly a US-only thing -- basically Verizon -- after Bell and Telus in Canada left CDMA for GSM).
All of this having little to do with financing your phone.
Unlocked phones sold as devices by themselves would be *wonderful*. I'm hoping that this actually gets carried out.
But I doubt it. Firstly a lot of people are making hay about the fact that this phone is "designed by Google", but so was the G1 essentially (also branded as Google, given to Google employees, called a Google phone, etc). So it seems like a refresh of the position the G1 held and people are extrapolating a little too much.