T-Mobile launches an app to unlock your smartphone

It took T-Mobile just one week to launch a phone unlocking app after President Obama signed the phone unlocking bill into law.

Not known for missing a chance to antagonize the excesses of market giants AT&T and Verizon, the launch of the app should be seen as partly symbolic. T-Mobile CEO John Legere has long railed against the clingy business practices of the big wireless companies. And locking a phone to a single carrier is a case in point.

The app, called Device Unlock, is now available in the Google Play store, but so far it unlocks only one kind of phone: the Samsung Galaxy Avant, a downmarket phone that launched exclusively on T-Mobile in late July.

Device Unlock lets users unlock the Avant either temporarily (for traveling abroad, perhaps) or permanently.

It’s likely that the app will extend to unlock other T-Mobile phones. The new unlocking law requires carriers to have a system in place for unlocking out-of-contract phones by February of 2015.