I have been playing with an interesting phone since yesterday. It may be appealing to a North American looking to check out Android for the least possible amount of money, but with high carrier flexibility.

I acquired a new T-Mobile Samsung Exhibit II 4G for $189 (no contract). The goal was to use it as a mobile hotspot on the $30 "Walmart plan" we've discussed on this BBS before. The phone actually allows WiFi and USB tethering with stock T-Mobile firmware, but the TouchWiz'd version of Android 2.3.5 wasn't my style. There is an unofficial port of CM9 for the phone.

Before I mess with any phone, I unlock it first. This is just for the future and I ran into an LG phone once that wouldn't present the unlock code input screen with anything but stock firmware. So, the total cost for this phone was $189 + $24 for the unlock code.

The first pleasant surprise came when I stuck an AT&T SIM in the phone to input the unlock code. The stock firmware was reporting a 3G connection on AT&T (not just T-Mobile). Indeed, the specs on GSMArena claim this phone is quadband HSPA, but with 850MHz (AT&T, Rogers, etc.) instead of 900MHz (some of Europe and Asia).

The phone's bootloader is unlocked right out of the box. To flash the CM9 ROM, all I had to do was flash CWM Recovery from the stock recovery, and then flash CM9 from CWM Recovery. That was the second pleasant surprise.

So, you can see that I now have a nice, modern, unlocked, ICS smartphone that works on all North American HSPA systems for $213 USD (plus a little work). The downside is that the CM9 ROM doesn't quite work with the camera. This would prevent it from being a daily driver for most people, but it's just being used as a mobile hotspot in my case. I doubt the camera will be an issue much longer, but there is no guarantee.

Below is a screen shot I took a couple minutes ago with an AT&T SIM in the phone. 3G speeds.... no problem.