Verizon iPhone 5 Confirmed to Be Unlocked on GSM 3G Networks

[John.B]

Originally Posted by Ramseagle

So which IPhone do they sell over there, or willit just not work on the 4g which is ok since all i get is barley 3g where i am

I don't know how the EE fallback will work. Check their coverage website to see what pre-3G data they support in the areas you expect to travel. Maybe even contact them an ask about their coverage with the new A1429 iPhone 5.

Originally Posted by cchukan

Does this apply to Sprint phones as well?

If I get an iPhone5 with sprint, will I be able to use a GSM sim card in Europe without getting it unlocked?

I seriously doubt it. Since Sprint has no mandate to unlock phones (like Verizon does as a requirement of their 700MHz spectrum auction), Sprint can pretty much do whatever they want. Silly, too, since they need to sell as many iPhones as they possibly can. In fact, if I was Daniel Hesse, I'd be selling unlocked iPhones on eBay and Craigslist, just the cover the traffic that won't come within a mile of his stores.

[SteveLV702]

Originally Posted by ace198

Call Verizon on the phone and they'll help you. Just make sure to activate the iPhone 5 on her account first. After that, you should be good to go on your account.

Yes, you can cut down the SIM but I wouldn't recommend that. Verizon should give a nano SIM for free.

I did the same thing I was able to swap and do everything online from home... I purchased on other persons account so phone was activated with their number.... So then had to go online and replace the new iphone 5 back to their old phone.... Then had to wait 24 hours before could activate the iphone 5 on my line cause it puts the SIM Card in a pending delete status so its technically still active in system so wont let you use it as gives a error that already registered with another line... So after the 24 hours I went back online and activated it on my line and works great...

[Melab]

This is interesting. I wonder how the hell this got through. This also might mean all iPhone 5s are technologically identical.

[Junkyman]

Some questions for clarification purposes:

The iPhone 5 Verizon works GSM unlocked, so it basically takes every GSM Sim there is in the world (e.g. Germany, UK etc.)?

CDMA will probably only work with Verizon, correct?

LTE will work with every carrier that offers LTE on the bands that are supported by the modell, correct? So it is not "LTE-locked" to the Verizon?

Thanks for some insightful answers!

Best,

Junkyman

[GorgonPhone]

Originally Posted by jessica.

The Nexus has been able to do voice and data simultaneously since last year on VZW.

hmm thats odd

[Anglezaak]

Originally Posted by Junkyman

Some questions for clarification purposes:

The iPhone 5 Verizon works GSM unlocked, so it basically takes every GSM Sim there is in the world (e.g. Germany, UK etc.)?

CDMA will probably only work with Verizon, correct?

LTE will work with every carrier that offers LTE on the bands that are supported by the modell, correct? So it is not "LTE-locked" to the Verizon?

Thanks for some insightful answers!

Best,

Junkyman

I may be wrong here, but my understanding is that it'll take any nano-sim, from any network in the world.

CDMA will only work with Verizon (if that's who you bought it from/for) as CDMA operators are stubborn. This is not a hardware issue, but an issue with the network themselves.

LTE is locked to the bands here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
...but not to any particular network.
The A1429CDMA may be effectively locked to 1,3 and 5 by the stubbornness of Verizon as bands 13 and 25 may be run on CDMA. I do not know this, but that's my understanding from the above website.

This: http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html
...may also be useful, but EE (or 3GEE as they're now calling themselves) hasn't been updated to this yet.

I'm not entirely sure I believe this, but: http://ee.co.uk/movetoee
...states "If you have bought your iPhone 5 in the UK you can move to EE. If you bought it from outside the UK you need to make sure it’s "GSM model A1429", as the other versions won’t work on our 4G network."

Shame as I want the A1429CDMA for use on Verizon in the US, EE in the UK and Etisalat in the UAE. I'm guessing that EE are saying their LTE won't work on the CDMA version, but cannot work out why. I guess 3G will do for the short times I'm there, but it still looks like a shame.

[Robbkt]

Some People says that once you insert a sim, the Verizon iPhone lock to sim operator and we can't use another sim. Someone knows about these information??

Someone could try Verizon iPhone in Europe?

[jimsowden]

Originally Posted by rjohnstone

Sure... it's software.
The phones are all capable of working on the same networks and frequencies.
Enabling all of those features all at once would be a severe power drain, so Apple programmed the chips to only use protocols and frequencies based on what carrier was getting the phone and what region of the world it was expected to be used in.
In short... they're all identical inside, it's the based band programming that is different.


Nothing "ignorant" about it and if you want to throw insults, at least understand what the real facts are first.
Qualcomm doesn't program the chip, Apple does.

I mean can you provide sources, not another light summary. I've never read anything about apple's baseband locking techniques, how chips are programmed to utilize UMTS or CDMA, lockage to different bands and frequencies of LTE. You know, like, facts.

[Anglezaak]

800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz frequencies are going to be freed up for LTE in the UK, starting with 1800MHz for network EE. This is according to www.4gbritain.org whichis a site set up and run by Everything Everywhere (EE).

So that's bands (7 and/or 38), 8, 20 and (3 and/or 35 and/or 39)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-UTRA#...nel_bandwidths

As we've seen, www.apple.com/iphone/lte says that band 3 (1800MHz) is available in the UK for the iPhone 5, so we should be all good, right?

[Anglezaak]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...usaolp00000003

2 things I found interesting:
"Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Raney said Monday that Verizon does not plan to relock the iPhone 5."
"the Verizon iPhone 5 even works on prepaid service plans."

[denletoy]

excellent