T-Mobile to offer Germans unlocked iPhones - at a price
After the news yesterday of T-Mobile being issued a restraining order on iPhone sales in Germany, T-Mobile has announced that an unlocked version of the handset will be available to German customers only. Albeit, it'll set you back €999 - that's US$1,477.97 or £716.Before you rush out and buy an unlocked handset, you might want to consider the maths. It's just £183 cheaper than the minimum cost of a U.K. iPhone and just under $400 cheaper than an American handset, including the lowest contract term for the locked handsets. Let's not also forget that you'll need some kind of SIM card and network service on top of that thousand euros. We're guessing that an unlocked French iPhone is likely going to set you back an identical figure.
Of course, with this huge premium being demanded, I'm certain that the iHacking talents around will have people begging for more unlocks for the foreseeable future.
[Via Engadget]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Optimus Rhyme said 8:39AM on 11-21-2007
Okay well the price is no surprise but does this not mean that some enterprising hackers can get the officially unlocked firmware and port it to locked phones everywhere?
I know it is probably harder than it sounds but surely someone will pony up the cash and try.
I for one am getting a bit fed up at the increasingly difficult patching and cracking of my US iphone to use it in the UK on Vodafone.
It's not so much the initial crack, more that if something were to go wrong with the phone and it had to be restored I would have t go through the whole process again.
I shall definitely be getting a contract with iPhone 2...
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Jon said 8:40AM on 11-21-2007
Once someone figures out how the official unlock is performed, they could easily offer a tool to replicate it, and there is no way that Apple could ever lock them out with future patches.
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Stuart Bell said 8:54AM on 11-21-2007
Of course, they may only sell the unlocked Phone IN Germany, but they'll be in breach of EU rules if they refuse to sell it to citizens of other EU states who are visiting Germany.
Stuart
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valthewu said 9:21AM on 11-21-2007
F*** you, Apple. And AT&T and t-mobile, and o2 and ora... wait, just got a call on my unlocked iphone...
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Michael Rose said 9:26AM on 11-21-2007
Jon -- out of curiosity, what makes you so sure that the unlocked version will be hardware-identical to the T-mobile version? Your comment suggests that you believe Apple will be applying some sort of unlocking procedure to previously-manufactured T-mobile versions of the iPhone, but as far as I know there's no reason that would be the procedure.
More likely the unlocked version will be a separate hardware build of the phone with different baseband firmware. You might be able to flash a t-m phone with the unlocked phone's settings, but you very well might not.
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Alex Dawson said 9:27AM on 11-21-2007
I have a feeling that T-Mobile will be back in court over the price difference between an almost identical iPod Touch 8GB and an iPhone 8Gb.
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rdas7 said 9:33AM on 11-21-2007
What about visual voicemail and EDGE data?
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Christina Warren said 9:33AM on 11-21-2007
Unless, of course, T-Mobile does their unlock through an internal system IMEI-generated thing, the way they do it in the US. For instance, I have a Motorola phone and T-Mobile service -- I can get T-Mobile to unlock my phone for me, they'll generate an unlock code via my IMEI and e-mail it to me - however AT&T and other GSM providers don't usually do this without a big fight. The only other way to unlock a Motorola phone, short of some very unreliable hacking methods (it used to be easy, but they keep updating the boot loaders making it difficult, if not impossible to downgrade/use with existing unlock tools available to people without the software that costs lots of cash/dongles to do "official unlocks") is to pay some company upfront to unlock based on your IMEI, and hope they don't take the money and run. In any event, this is only done because Motorola has that sort of system built into their phone dev software for phone retailers/repair places and because they sell unlocked versions of their phone; i.e., it's a hard coded solution, not a software exploit.
If T-Mobile is going to unlock the phones based on IMEI generated codes (or something to that effect), the only way it could be unlocked would be to have access to the software that generates the codes. If some dark-hatted employee at Deutsche Telekom somehow makes those tools available, well, then it's another story entirely.
Still, as nice as it would be if this would be some reverse-engineerable solution, I'm kind of thinking it'll be like a typical phone unlock by a company that actually makes phones as one of their primary businesses, and be a system generated code based on IMEI numbers. I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple and/or AT&T keeps an eye out on IMEI that show up as being unlocked the "legit" way (meaning it isn't a firmware hack, but an actual unlock) and compare them with IMEIs that have been sold as legal unlocks. It would make that IMEI tracking stuff make more sense (and I'm not a tinfoil hat person, AT ALL, I just doubt AT&T hasn't thought about what will happen when legal unlocks come out of Europe and people try to clone it).
But this is just early-morning conjecture.
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Jesse David Hollington said 9:35AM on 11-21-2007
Personally, I suspect this is some kind of bluff on the part of T-Mobile to make a point after the recent decision by the courts to block the sale of the iPhone if it's locked only to T-Mobile. By offering an unlocked version, even at an exorbitant price that nobody is likely to pay, they're probably complying with some aspect of that ruling.
The thing is, however, that just because the phone is SIM-unlocked (ala AnySim or IPSF style), doesn't mean that iTunes is going to cooperate in *activating* it. Since the activation is controlled entirely by iTunes and the iTunes Store on the back-end, I suspect that anybody who buys an "unlocked" iPhone will find iTunes telling them "There's no carrier that supports the installed SIM card in the iPhone" and refusing to activate it.
In this case, T-Mobile may be complying with the letter of the law (the phone is hardware unlocked to accept any SIM card), but it would still require Apple to open things up further to allow for *activation* of the iPhone with other SIM cards -- something it doesn't presently provide for.
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Nik Fletcher said 9:36AM on 11-21-2007
rdas7: You're out of luck when it comes to Visual Voicemail. EDGE is going to be required with another carrier, so you'll want to budget for that too.
Nik
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Nathan F said 10:08AM on 11-21-2007
I don't understand why people get so bent out of shape about a phone being locked to a specific carrier. In a free market economy, business should be able to make exclusive deals for products/devices, so long as their not taking advantage of the public. Apple is not forcing people to buy an iPhone, so if you want one, what's the big deal about having to use AT&T, O2, T-Mobile, or Orange as the exclusive carrier? I could see people getting upset if Wal-Mart was the only place that one could buy groceries(becuase everybody HAS to eat)
I say get over it!
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Christina Warren said 10:39AM on 11-21-2007
@Nathan F., because a lot of us don't like being tied into a contract with one company, for two years, to use what is essentially (and already considered as such in many parts of Europe) a utility. If I travel outside the bounds of AT&T's service and don't want to pay their insane prices to use my phone because they won't let me use a SIM chip from a provider in that area, THAT's a problem. In the US your argument has more merit (though it still doesn't change the fact that plenty of people have a right to be peeved at being tethered to a utility to use a certain device, and tethered with contract), but in Europe where people often travel to different countries, being forced to stay with one cellular carrier is just not practical, and consumers, who are customers, are going to look at alternatives.
For what it's worth - I generally agree with your sentiment - which is why I don't have an iPhone - I loathe AT&T and am not willing to change service, sign a 2-year contract and pay more money to use a $400 phone. That doesn't mean it doesn't still baffle me that Apple would make the decision to be carrier exclusive, nor does it make me unsympathetic to people who want to use the product with a different carrier.
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Nathan F said 11:42AM on 11-21-2007
back @ Christina
It's pretty simple, if you don't want to be tethered to a contract or a certain carrier to use a product, don't buy it, there are plenty of other mobile phones out there.
It makes perfect sense for Apple to tie the device to a specific carrier, it means a steady source of income for them. Apple receives a small amount of money each month from the designated carrier. Think of the nightmare it would be to collect such payments from tens of different carriers.
Maybe Americans are just used to this sort of thing, I don't know for sure, but I think the Europeans are blowing it way out of proportion. If you want an iPhone, then accept it as it is, other wise buy a RAZR or a Moto Q.
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Mike said 11:43AM on 11-21-2007
Apparently the phone hardware is the same. Locked iPhones bought after Nov 19 (and before today) can be unlocked without charge. After asking for it in the T-Mobile store people are being told to restore their iPhones via iTunes after 24h and that is supposed to unlock them. Same goes for customers who buy a 999 Euro phone today, they have to unlock them with iTunes.
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hq3gp said 11:52AM on 11-21-2007
Well it was about time till that happened. Im just wondering... if you have to unlock via itunes it must mean that you iphone must have to have been purchased from t-mobile in order to unlock the handset.
Well i have two unlocked and an o2 one. Im still waiting for the unlock...
Hopefully the unlcok will be a firmware thing only, so maybe someone who has downloaded the t-mobile restore could post that firmware file and then we can all be free!
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Ian said 11:57AM on 11-21-2007
A little patience goes a long way. If everyone ignored the hype, the
price would come crashing down much faster. Instead impatience means
everyone pays more, then when the next iPhone version come out,
you'll pay again for that too! I'm waiting until I can get it on PAYG
or free on contract.
An example of this impatience is above from "valthewu" who has a strop because he can't get his own way (can't afford an iPhone?). The fact people are buying PROVE Apple have priced the iPhone correctly relative to the investment they made and the expected demand.
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cbisquit said 12:21PM on 11-21-2007
Just because someone is allowed to do something in a free market doesn't mean we're required to like it, or even shut up and comply with their intent, even if it is Apple.
If they started selling a 40gb ipod touch, but only one model that is factory-locked into displaying slaughterhouse photos as the background, I would have no compunction buying it and using third party tools to change it. Don't blindly follow the wishes of any company or use them as your moral compass. That's the kind of rdf crap that gives Apple users a bad name.
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Nathan F said 12:46PM on 11-21-2007
@ Obisquit
I'm not using Apple as my moral compass, I merely speaking from capitalist point of view. Corporations should be able to do what they wish with their products (with in reason, I'm not for Microsoft killing their customers etc) As a consumer, you can either choose to to use the product or not.
I wanted an iPhone, So I bought one (but I was already an AT&T customer) and have heeded the terms of use.
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geochick said 12:47PM on 11-21-2007
NICE READING THE UNOFFICIAL IPHONE WEBLOG AGAIN TODAY THANK YEWS!
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Damien Guard said 1:03PM on 11-21-2007
The important thing to note is that there are plenty of places that don't have iPhones for sale and some (like where I live in Guernsey) probably never will because Apple are far too big to deal with the area and none of the chosen carriers operate here.
For all those people travelling to one of these countries (or eBaying) an unlocked phone isn't because you prefer carrier x but simply because it's the only option if you want one.
The whole situation of subsidised hardware is a disaster for consumer rights and retailers. It has led to a throw-away culture with mobile phones that isn't healthy to the environment either.
[)amien
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