Your $1000 French unlocked iPhone is locked?
By Danny Mendez
When Apple is forced to do something it doesn’t want to do, it will usually find away around whatever is causing it grief. And so it turns out “unlocked” iPhones sold in France aren’t truly unlocked.
When Apple decided to take the iPhone overseas to Europe, it really underestimated foreign law. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Apple was eventually forced to sell an unlocked version of its popular handset in both France and Germany. Apple is selling the unlocked iPhone at ridiculous prices in both countries: $1,460 for the Germans and about $1000 for the French, but it turns out the French “unlocked” handset is only semi-unlocked.
According to iPhone Atlas, the French unlocked iPhone doesn’t work with foreign SIM cards, meaning that the phone will only work with French carriers. Some call it a country lock, a restrictive measure applied by Apple to prevent tourists from taking home an unlocked model.
For those looking for an unlocked iPhone, there’s always the possibility of unlocking your iPhone through third party programs. Although it isn’t illegal to do so, it’s definitely a warranty-voiding measure. Apple can just as easily unlock your handset through iTunes, but the company’s become too greedy to make it that easy. Also, don’t forget Apple is expected to release the next version of the iPhone sometime next year (May or June?), which may hit stores in unlocked form if Apple ever realizes that locking handsets sucks for users.
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January 2nd, 2008
Sorry, but French iPhones work perfectly in all the EU due to the French laws. The phone has to be completely free, not only for French carriers. The only thing is that version 1.1.2 has a little bug with the national prefixes along the EU, just have tu run iWorld to make it work in your country. I assure it works in Spain with Spanish carriers, but in fact I had tu run iWorld. It’s possible that version 1.1.3 gets right with the bug. Perhaps Apple has done this bug “on purpose”, I don’t really know. There’s another question more, in the most of the countries of the EU it’s perfectly legal tu unlock phones directly from the manufacturer or by your own methods (if it’s form manufacturer you will have to pay almost sure), but anyways you can have your unlocking key. So in fact, here is a problem for Apple. In France the carrier is obliged by the laws to give the user the unlocking key for free if 6 months of contract have passed; here in Spain is for example 18 months maximum., different countries, different laws but all of them look similar about unlocking phones legally.