Yesterday I went to the Apple Store in Bellevue, WA to inquire about the unlocked iPhone4.
One of my questions was, "Is it possible to unlock my current iPhone?", as I bought it for full retail back in October. Surprisingly the answer was Yes. All I needed to do was pay the difference, 50 dollars, and they would unlock it for me. I didn't even need to have my receipt or the original box with me.
The process was long and the specialists weren't sure how to proceed, as no one had done this before. The procedure as explained to me was, they would refund the original price of the phone, then charge me the price for an unlocked version, the difference being 50 dollars. The refund was done on an Apple Gift Card, and I was able to use another credit I had to cover the difference.
They told me that I would keep my original phone and they would just add the IMEI number to the list of unlocked phones. This however is not what happened.
After they unlocked my phone I went straight to Tmobile, in Bellevue Square and they cut my sim card. Unfortunately my phone was not unlocked. So I went back to the Apple Store to find out what went wrong. At that point two more people got involved, a genius, and the store manager.
After some discussion it was decided to just replace the phone with a new unlocked version. This turned out to work perfectly.
So if you paid full price for your iPhone4 go in and see if you can get it unlocked. There is one caveat, they told me afterwards that since I had purchased my phone back in October they were not supposed to unlock it. Only phones purchased in the last 30 days were eligible to be unlocked. But since they had already stated they would do it and were half way through the process before realizing, they let it slide.
Word of advice, Apple doesn't communicate with their stores very well, so it looks to be first come first serve to take advantage of this information gap.
I would also like to say that all the techs at Apple were extremely helpful and very patient. Superb guys over in Bellevue, I highly recommend this store, even if its really busy all the time.
Now on to Tmobile to pick up a Sensation. Fingers crossed for an unlocked bootloader. Good week.
One of my questions was, "Is it possible to unlock my current iPhone?", as I bought it for full retail back in October. Surprisingly the answer was Yes. All I needed to do was pay the difference, 50 dollars, and they would unlock it for me. I didn't even need to have my receipt or the original box with me.
The process was long and the specialists weren't sure how to proceed, as no one had done this before. The procedure as explained to me was, they would refund the original price of the phone, then charge me the price for an unlocked version, the difference being 50 dollars. The refund was done on an Apple Gift Card, and I was able to use another credit I had to cover the difference.
They told me that I would keep my original phone and they would just add the IMEI number to the list of unlocked phones. This however is not what happened.
After they unlocked my phone I went straight to Tmobile, in Bellevue Square and they cut my sim card. Unfortunately my phone was not unlocked. So I went back to the Apple Store to find out what went wrong. At that point two more people got involved, a genius, and the store manager.
After some discussion it was decided to just replace the phone with a new unlocked version. This turned out to work perfectly.
So if you paid full price for your iPhone4 go in and see if you can get it unlocked. There is one caveat, they told me afterwards that since I had purchased my phone back in October they were not supposed to unlock it. Only phones purchased in the last 30 days were eligible to be unlocked. But since they had already stated they would do it and were half way through the process before realizing, they let it slide.
Word of advice, Apple doesn't communicate with their stores very well, so it looks to be first come first serve to take advantage of this information gap.
I would also like to say that all the techs at Apple were extremely helpful and very patient. Superb guys over in Bellevue, I highly recommend this store, even if its really busy all the time.
Now on to Tmobile to pick up a Sensation. Fingers crossed for an unlocked bootloader. Good week.
