Kinda pointless for Samsung to be selling them, then.
Exactly... No point at all.
Hold on. If you buy the AT&T version from Samsung you will get a phone that works on the AT&T network only....
I have purchased many unlocked phones and they work but you don't get the carrier benefits.
Any unlocked phone from Samsung will work on the At&t network(without the carrier features). There is a difference between the unlocked phones and carrier version phones purchased from Samsung.
He's actually right. I thought he was wrong but I went to my s9 plus at&t bought outright from samsung and it went let me activate wifi calling. Damn.
My brother bought an At&t carrier version Note 8 direct from Samsung and its exactly the same as what's sold through At&t... All the carrier features work as far as I know - He uses Wifi calling since he has zero reception at home. He did get a new sim card from the At&t store after he got it(don't really think that'd make a difference though).
IMO Unlocked versions are only good if you're planning on switching carriers while owning the phone or selling it instead of trading it in/keeping it. Yes, Most carrier services such as SMS and mobile hotspot are now supported with major U.S. GSM and CDMA networks for unlocked phones but not always & support for certain features and services such as VoWiFi and VoLTE vary(usually not available) by the wireless service provider.
Yes, carrier specific applications, or bloat as many refer to it, are not pre-loaded on Unlocked Samsung phones either... This is way overblown imo - there isn't as much as there used to be & a lot can be deleted instead of just disabled and many that can't be deleted are necessary for their features and services. If you don't want or use them then unlocked is the way to go. Personally, it's worth the extra couple bucks just to buy from At&t though - I can just deal with them if I have an issue, less hassle and If I don't buy my phone outright the payments are added to my bill instead of having a separate payment with Samsung. With the pre-order trade in deal I went with payments & it only added 16.33$ monthly over 30 months. Samsung wouldn't even give me the trade in deal anyways since the back of my S7 was beat up and cracked - At&t had zero issue!