The vast majority of the US still gets their phones directly from the carriers, be it online or in their stores, but there is an increasing trend to source them in a different way - by paying for the full price of the device, and then bringing it to whichever carrier you'd like to use it with. Until recently, that was only possible with GSM carriers, but even that has started to change, with an increasing number of devices capable of running on all major US networks.

Nowadays, Qualcomm and other cellular modem makers have gotten so good in stuffing tens of LTE or 5G bands and filtering ...