For years, the only decent way to buy a phone was from your carrier.

Those days are behind us.

Then,you had to promise to stay with Comcast for two years just to buy that laptop.

No one would ever agree to conditions like that today.

Buying cell phones hasnt always worked that way, but it can.

Multi-year contracts existed long before post-paid cell service.

Seemed like an okay deal for what was little more than a glorified utility.

Except, it wasnt.

Subsidized hardware meant that customers never really knew what their phoneorservices really cost.

Depending on the phone you want, buying outright could save $15-30 per month.

In the old days, the cost of phones was lumped in with your service.

Youd just keep paying to subsidizeother peoplesphones.

We gave up the ability to comparison shop for our hardwareandservice.

Unsurprisingly, when competition flies out the window, it results in a raw deal for customers.

Nowadays, carriers have started to change their ways.

Subsidizing phones made sense when customers didnt know that most phones were cheap.

Now, phones are expensive and, more importantly, customers want to upgrade more often.

So, carriers have creatednew, more complicated phone-buying plans.

Some, like Verizons financing plans, are little more than monthly payment plans.

Even when they dont suck, theyre rarely worth the other trade-offs.

In most cases, however, theres little reason to buy from a carrier anymore.

Most carriers have cheaper plans if youre not buying a phone through them.

Carrier-Specific Phones Are Bad for Consumers

Last week, Motorola announced a new phonewith a shatterproof screen.

If you arent on Verizon, though, youre out of luck.

Its a carrier exclusive.

Motorola makes a phone thats basically the Moto X, but with a crazy-huge battery.

Once again, you canonly get it for Verizon.

When Samsung launched its mobile payment service, Samsung Pay, it initially only launched forevery carrier but Verizon.

HTC gave us an insight intowhat the update process is likefor their devices.

In some cases, this results in updates taking many months longer than they need to.

In other cases, it leads to no updates at all.

On the one hand, thats kind of a dick move on Motorolas part.

Unfortunately, we dont live in that world yet, but we are getting closer.

There are still some roadblocks, though.

As a consumer, its hard to know which phones will work on which carriers.

You cant say the same thingabout every phone.

Sometimes there are multiple variants of the same handset, each with carrier-specific radios.

Other times one model holds the radios for all carriers.

That being said, its getting easier.

Weve featuredtools like WillMyPhoneWorkto figure out which phone will work on which data pipe.

You and everyone else are better off if buying a phone had nothing to do with picking a carrier.

We already see glimpses of how this could work.

This could be the way it is for everyone.

In fact, itshouldbe.

Illustration by Sam Wooley.