iPhone - Those who will be buying one, in here.

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Unlight said:
Can anyone recommend a US seller of these, selling unlocked 1.1.1 versions?

Preferably under £300 delivered!!
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If you get a UK one in 2 weeks and unlock it yerself it'll only cost you £269 :) That's what I'm planning on doing, since I couldn't find any genuine sounding sellers for less than about £340!
 
Hamzter said:
If you get a UK one in 2 weeks and unlock it yerself it'll only cost you £269 :) That's what I'm planning on doing, since I couldn't find any genuine sounding sellers for less than about £340!
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Except you can't get one in the UK without signing up to a contract, so you're not really getting it for £269 (it's £279 incidentally).
 
No, you do need to sign up for a contract in the UK. Its £269 + an 18 month contract (min £35 a month!!)

Why bother with that when I can get it for the same price without the contract from the US? Plus get an upgrade to an n95 or something for free which I can sell on??
 
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The system in the UK should be identical to that in the US, you buy the iPhone through either Apple or O2 for £269, you then take the phone home and plug it into iTunes, there you'll be prompted to sign up for one of the packages before it's activated. That's what they want anyway, however if you just buy the iPhone and unlock it, you can skip the activation and contract sign up stuff, and you have a fully working iPhone.

If you get an unlocked iPhone from the US, this is exactly what has been done to it, they bought the phone from Apple and unlocked it without signing up to the contract.

So you CAN get an iPhone for just £269 (assuming they don't decide to drastically change the way you buy an iPhone), if you can deal with the complexity of unlocking it you'd be better off buying one from the UK.
 
Hamzter said:
The system in the UK should be identical to that in the US, you buy the iPhone through either Apple or O2 for £269, you then take the phone home and plug it into iTunes, there you'll be prompted to sign up for one of the packages before it's activated. That's what they want anyway, however if you just buy the iPhone and unlock it, you can skip the activation and contract sign up stuff, and you have a fully working iPhone.

If you get an unlocked iPhone from the US, this is exactly what has been done to it, they bought the phone from Apple and unlocked it without signing up to the contract.

So you CAN get an iPhone for just £269 (assuming they don't decide to drastically change the way you buy an iPhone), if you can deal with the complexity of unlocking it you'd be better off buying one from the UK.
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I would be surprised if that is the case in the UK to be honest as it's such a huge departure from the norm. We'll see soon enough I guess.
 
Durzel said:
I would be surprised if that is the case in the UK to be honest as it's such a huge departure from the norm. We'll see soon enough I guess.
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I?m betting it's the same process as the US iPhone.

After all, it was an unheard of practice when Apple did it there.

...trying to explain it to the british is the real challenge..
 
Durzel said:
I would be surprised if that is the case in the UK to be honest as it's such a huge departure from the norm. We'll see soon enough I guess.
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It was a huge departure from the norm in the US too, hopefully they'll do it that way though, I think it's a great way to buy a phone. I hate having to sit around in a phone shop while the dimwit sales guy type in all my information. Now I can do it from my sofa, result!
 
I'd rather take the dimwit and walk away with the handset for free though :p I don't think getting people to activate it themselves will be an issue, but trying to give people a good reason why they should pay so much for a phone and then get tied into a contract will be.
 
Caged said:
I'd rather take the dimwit and walk away with the handset for free though :p I don't think getting people to activate it themselves will be an issue, but trying to give people a good reason why they should pay so much for a phone and then get tied into a contract will be.
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Maybe, I have no existing contract with o2 however, so I've no hope of getting a discount I don't think (that said, I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to get an iphone straight away anyway).

I don't think there will be many discounts going around for anybody actually, but i could be wrong.
 
Says on the CPW site that you take it home and sign up through iTunes. That's the way it works if you buy it online from Apple.
 
Theres no way they will hand over iphones for £270 without contract, they would be stupid to knowing well that they can be easily unlocked.

sid
 
sid said:
Theres no way they will hand over iphones for £270 without contract, they would be stupid to knowing well that they can be easily unlocked.

sid
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Do you want to put money on that? bearing in mind they'll tell the general public that some features will only work with o2 (quite true I believe) and that unlocking them isn't for idiots.

They'll do the credit card and limit to 2 per person that they introduced in the US of course and finally they'll release software updates that might just break the unlocked handsets.

I reckon they'll do it and I reckon they'll still do pretty well out of it.
 
sid said:
Theres no way they will hand over iphones for £270 without contract, they would be stupid to knowing well that they can be easily unlocked.
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I think they probably will, bearing in mind that it will always be with the threat that some future update might make the phone stop working. Lots of people aren't going to dare try the hack anyway. Finally I don't they're losing money on a phone at £270 - after all, the iPod Touch of the same size sells for £199 (with presumably lots of profit). They did it in America where it was equally unexpected.
 
These unlocked handsets probably don't bother Apple too much actually, they're still making money on the phones because they only cost about $280 to make (estimated), so that's $120 profit for each phone that's unlocked. The people that unlocked their phones are probably the ones that would never sign up to an iPhone contract, so they're probably not losing out much at all.
 
Hamzter said:
The people that unlocked their phones are probably the ones that would never sign up to an iPhone contract, so they're probably not losing out much at all.
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I very much doubt that. Someone willing to spend £270 on a phone in order to do some fancy hack that risks their warranty in order to use the phone will often be the people most desperate to use the latest phone available. They've already spent £270 on a phone, so they're probably reasonably heavy users and they're not especially poor. Most probably would spend £35 a month on the phone if it was the only way to get it. I'm sure Apple will do their best to stop people from unlocking the phone.
 
well, whatever people on here think, barring a stunning u turn, in 9 days time apple are going to sell the iphone for £270 and expect people to sign up for a contract at home.

i also disagree, the people who'll buy a £270 phone and then hack it to unlock it are the technically minded. those who're desperate to have the latest greatest phone will *in general* pay for the contract and get visual voicemail and all the rest. Maybe the people on this forum who're desperate for an iphone will buy it and unlock it but they aren't a good representation on the general public, being a computer forum and all.
 
So long as you can use any o2 sim in it then I won't be unlocking.

I'm not an existing customer, I just hate their iPhone tariffs.. and would rather use my own tariff even if it means not getting the data etc.
 
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