“The unlocked iPhone 4 actually slipped out a day early, and is now available through the Apple Store,” Chris Rawson reports for TUAW.
“Both MacRumors and 9to5 Mac now confirm that unlocked versions of the iPhone 4 have arrived in Apple’s retail outlets and will go on sale starting Wednesday,” Rawson reports. “The 16 GB iPhone 4 will cost US$649, while the 32 GB model will retail for $749.”
Rawson reports, “These prices are higher than U.S. buyers might be used to seeing for the iPhone because they’re handset-only prices, independent of any carrier contract. Note that this concerns only the GSM model; the CDMA/Verizon model is expected to remain Verizon-only for now.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
RUMOR: U.S. getting unlocked GSM iPhone 4 on Wednesday – June 13, 2011
Let the bloodbath…begi…continue.
Great ! Finally iPhone as a phone has what its supposed to have.
No more extortive roaming fees for overseas travelers !!!
Pay as you go sims are available everywhere for fair usage prices.
What, exactly, does ‘unlocked’ mean?
Simple answer, for those who don’t know anything about mobile phones (not necessarily Shan who asked the question):
Most of the mobile carriers in the world use GSM technology. In US, those are AT&T and T-Mobile. One of the conveniences of GSM is that the phone number that is assigned by the carrier to the user is NOT programmed directly into the phone. Instead, it is encoded on a small electronic card (called SIM). This little chip contains the phone number info, as well as some free memory for user’s address book. The convenience of this is that you can take that SIM card and move it from phone to phone, and you’ll always have the same phone number, on the same carrier, with the same voice/data/text plan — all that is tied directly to the SIM, and not to the phone.
Conversely, if you have an ‘unlocked’ phone, you can put any SIM into it, from any carrier, anywhere in the world, with any plan.
When you buy a subsidised phone ($0 with a two-year plan, for example), your carrier locks your phone, so that you cannot take the original SIM out and put a SIM from another carrier.
The issue is the only other gsm provider in the us is t mobile and their 3G frequencies are different and won’t work on the iPhone or any att iPhone.
You can get edge and voice just not 3G. So unless you travel outside the us makes no sense I guess.
It’s not handicapped by the Android system or Nokia Symbian or Microsoft Windows Mobile.
It is factory not locked to a carrier. It can be used on any gsm carrier anywhere in the world. They are common place in uk, Europe, and hong kong
It means you can put any SIM Card from any carrier when traveling; you will save in roaming costs and will work almost anywhere
But AT&T still won’t let you sign up with a Pay-as-you-go plan with an unlocked iPhone. You still have to buy a ridiculous two year subscription and a ridiculous data plan.
Just keep quiet and don’t tell them you have an iPhone.
Would it help if I told them I’m buying SIM cards for my Android phone? Like would they give me two cuz i would have bought my Android on a BOGO sale.
I kinda figured out why they do BOGO sales on Android phone. Cuz they only work half the time so you need two to keep going.
Will a one of those devices that cut a SIM donw to mini/micro SIM dimensions work on AT&T prepaid SIMs??
SIM to Micro-SIM
I don’t know about ATT, but I cut down a couple of SIMs to micro-SIM size with a pair of sharp scissors (ensure you mark where the notch it first!) from O2 and Orange and they are still working fine.
PAYG best for me
I don’t MAKE many iPhone calls. Work pays for my home landline so I call from that. When at the office I use that phone. When on the road I mainly use data and receive calls (can’t take calls while driving). So PAYG is way best for me.
If you chart out the high initial cost then low monthly cost, the break-even point for me is about 16 months i.e. after 16 months I have paid for the phone and the monthly cost is only £10 (~$US17) for calls and 3G data.
take a friends crappy phone that gets internet and tell them that is your new device… then you slap that sim in your iphone and you are set…. as long as they don’t randomly check your account which will then report back to their system that its in an iphone not some crappy blackberry
Oh, I’m sure there are ways to sneak around AT&T’s enforcement, but they have strongly discouraged this up till now. Hopefully that idiotic policy will change now.
How can AT&T not let you use their prepaid card with this phone? You can easily buy an AT&T SIM card online (on Amazon, for example) and stick it into ANY unlocked GSM phone, including the iPhone.
All I know is that in the past, AT&T wasn’t letting people use an iPhone with their pay-as-you-go plans even after they completed the two year contract. They only allowed that for the first gen iPhone.
If you look at the list of compatible phones on the AT&T sim card page, Apple iPhone is NOT listed. Even though there is obviously NO reason for it not being listed.
If AT&T were smart, they will embrace and loudly advertise the unlocked iPhone option. It really is an advantage over Verizon.
And maybe Apple will activate the mythical GSM half of the chip in the Verizon iPhones this year.
It will work. The only issue for iPhone 4 is that it uses the smaller SIM card, which may or may not be available for use with any of the “officially supported” phones. You can supposedly clip away the excess plastic on a regular SIM card and make it work as a smaller SIM card. Tutorials are online, including YouTube.
I already used AT&T’s pre-paid GoPhone service with one of their cheap phones that cost me less than $20. The SIM card from that phone is working in my iPhone, which I bought used for $115 on eBay. I basically use it like an iPod touch that can also make phone calls.
Once the iPhone 3GS starts to go off-contract en masse, which is in a few weeks, I’m going to start looking for a used one at a good price.
BUT I don’t think it makes any sense to pay $649 to do this with a brand new iPhone 4. If you are willing to pay that much (upfront) for a phone, just pay $199 and the monthly service fee for the next two years, and use a fully supported network. After two years, if the phone is still working well for you, THEN consider some lower cost alternatives.
Okay, from the horse’s mouth (or backside, depending on your point of view):
AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom tells TUAW:
You can, of course, buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple and use it on the AT&T network. If you do, there’s no term commitment – and customers may choose any current voice and data plan. AT&T offers data plans starting as low as $15 per month for 250 MB of data. (You do still need to have both a voice and data plan.)
So, they are going to allow the unlocked iPhones but they are still forcing you to buy a voice AND data plan whether you want it or not.
Enter the cloud an imessage
Yup, so it makes no sense for most people. You are paying back a “subsidy” every month that you paid for yourself. The only difference is that you can stop doing it at any time. But since you are likely to use a phone that you just paid $649 for, for at least two years, you might was well pay only $199 for it and have AT&T pay the remaining $450 to Apple.
If Congress wants to distract itself with some tech-related legislation (instead of deal with the debt/budget situation), it should force the wireless carriers separate “subsidy recovery fee” from “wireless service fee” on the monthly bill. The “subsidy recovery fee” is for the carrier recovering that $450 it paid upfront Apple over the contract’s term. The “wireless service fee” is to actually provide the service.
Once the two-year contract expires, the phone’s owner can keep using it and only pay the “wireless service fee” going forward. And people who buy a $649 iPhone 4 (or a used out-of-contract iPhone) can sign up for month-to-month fully supported service while paying ONLY the “wireless service fee.”
YAWN!
I don’t get what the big fuss is all about. Apple has ALWAYS offered unlocked iPhones. If you read the fine print at the bottom of the Apple Store iPhones page it quite clearly states:
“For those who are not qualified customers, are not eligible for an early upgrade, or wish to buy iPhone as a gift, the prices are $449 (8GB), $649 (16GB), or $749 (32GB)”
This has been in place since the release of the iPhone 4. Since the Apple reseller here in Fiji is not permitted to carry iPhones many of us have purchased unlocked iPhones out of the USA for use on our local GSM networks.
We’re also quite used to paying full price for high-end phones as our carriers do not generally subsidise handset costs by pushing users into multi-year contracts.
But probably NOT available (pre-packaged) in RETAIL stores, which is what the article is saying.
So does this mean ATT will give me an unlock code when my two years are up? Bastards.
is the iphone 4 unlocked version available on stores or online orders?