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June 14, 2007

iphone

Want an unlocked iPhone? (Really.)

Posted Jun. 14, ’07, 11:30 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | iPhone

iphone_home_usethisone.jpgThe Scobleizer is reporting that PureMobile.com, an upstate New York-based company will be selling an unlocked iPhone. The company doesn’t list a price, which gets our sketchy-dar going, but hey — it make sense that someone would try to pull off this trick.

Still, if PureMobile gets stopped by Jobs & Co’s legal team, it’s a safe bet that when the iPhone is released in Europe, that you’ll be able to snag an unlocked one (legally) from somewhere, like, say, Amazon.co.uk.

[via Cult of Mac]


3 Comments

Michael Long said:

And this helps.. how? If your provider doesn't support the protocols needed (like for visual voicemail), just how useful is an unlocked phone?

June 14, 2007 1:41 PM
George said:

Well, they could in theory send in people to buy iPhones and then immediately after cancel their 2-year contract (and pay the early termination fee). So, by that math these "unlocked" iPhones should cost a mere $1000 or so.

Most of the iPhone features should still work I'd imagine. If nothing else it should be mostly functional over wi-fi.

And really, we all know there's going to be a ton of iPhones being sold on e-Bay before midnight on the 29th.

June 15, 2007 7:38 AM
Walt said:

Lest we forget, iTunes account is *required,* and that would lead me to surmise:
A. No account, no syncy
B. No syncy, why bother?

Unless someone writes new syncing software (SDK required for that? Maybe that's why no SDK yet?) specifically for unlocked phones. Maybe some fancy AJAX programming could help sync from some web contact/calendar data like Yahoo or gmail, but without an iTunes account, you’re not going to get the synchronizing capabilities. I could be totally wrong about the whole iTunes account not syncing with unauthorized phones, but it makes sense to me.

Imagine... some guy pays $1500 for an unlocked iPhone only to find out it won't sync with anything on his computer. I'd be pretty mad! ;-)

June 15, 2007 9:05 AM

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