iPhone without Contract in Germany? - 999€ UPDATE: Confirmed + 600€ for an unlock!

[BillyShears]

Copying the Unlocked Software?

What would stop someone from buying the unlocked iPhone and copying the unlocked software to another phone? It seems to me you'd be assured no update would break your iPhone.

I guess they might have a registry in iTunes that stores the unlocked phones' serial numbers, and will send you the locked software updates. But still, you should be able to copy the unlocked software each time it is updated, right?

 

[MacAodh]

Does this mean that some clever hacker somewhere will be able to see what is contained in the unlock coding and then unlock all 1.1.2 iPhones?

That's what i'm thinking... but it will have to be a rich hacker!!!

 

[spinstorm]

I would think that is likely although the clever hacker probably CAN'T afford an unlocked phone! lol

 

[gnasher729]

That's a bit much.. considering the ipod touch is 299 euros.

Apple are basically trying to claim that a slightly bigger battery, a bluetooth chip and a 2G radio are worth 700 euros. lol.

They are of course not trying to claim that at all. They don't want to sell unlocked iPhones at all (Apple likely doesn't care, but the phone company does). And there are no laws in Germany that make it illegal to offer goods for any price you like.

 

[swissmann]

Price - a different story. My focus is hopefully someone will figure out how they are unlocking this and make an unlock for the rest of us that doesn't get broken with updates.

 

[freediverdude]

So let me get this straight.......in Germany, the iphones aren't sold at Apple stores, ONLY through T-Mobile stores? If that's the case, then Apple really doesn't have much to do with this, other than enforcing their contract with T-Mobile.

They've shipped the phones to T-Mobile, and probably have a contract that T-Mobile must sell them for $X or higher, to promote a premium brand, and Apple gets a cut of the service fees. And so when the court ruling came down, I bet all that happened was T-Mobile went to Apple and said "Well, we have to sell a few unlocked for now, what price can we charge, and what amount can we give you for each phone, that will satisfy our part of the contract for those phones?" And they came up with 999 euros, with probably X euros going to Apple to satisfy Apple's cut of the service fee part of the contract for each phone.

The bad part is, now that there will be a few legitimate unlocked phones, the hackers will probably get their hands on one and reverse engineer how it was done. So the cat's going to be kind of out of the bag.

 

[GoodWatch]

My uneducated guess is that both T-Mobile and Apple want to recoup some of the lost turnover because of this ruling. 600 Euro is a bit steep. Ahhhhh, the capitalist system in full swing here. No-one can prevent T-Mobile to ask 999 Euro for an unlocked iPhone. I’ll just bide my time, they will not be for sale before March 2008 in my country anyway. But one fact remains the same: there’s only one provider per country allowed to sell the iPhone. Still no competition, alas.

 

[sys0p]

Too expensive or not - that's not the issue - you can get a flight to the US for less than 600 euros and certainly nobody will be sued for selling a product too expensive (who decides that anyway ...) ...

The real question is ...

after having unlocked iPhones - will it be possible to use all its features with other carriers ? Will Vodaphone offer a iPhone compatible plan ? EDGE - Voicemail ?

 

[christian_k]

Unlokcing is in fact _free_!

The news is not really correct.

- You can buy an iPhone with a contract for 399 € as it used to be, but it will be unlocked.
- If you have bought an iPhone on Nov, 19th or later, you can have it
unlocked for _free_.
- You can buy an iPhone without contract for 999€, this will of course
be unlocked, too.
- The injunction of Vodafone said, if T would not do this, they'd have to pay up to 250,000 € _per_device_!

Note: If T-Mobile wins in the court, they maight stop selling unlocked / contract free phones again.

Source: www.spiegel.de (Web site of a popular German paper).

Christian

 

[snowfall]

WTF, that makes no sense. An iPod Touch with Bluetooth, modem and speaker/mic does not add that much to the cost.

Bad Apple.

At this stage an iPod Touch is looking better for me.

But the point isn't to place the iPhone at an agreeable price, its to try to comply with local laws while also making it so unattractive that most people will go with their preferred option, the contract.

 

[em500]

I think their success has gone to their heads here

Apple obviously knows they have a great product with the iPhone, but I fear greed is going to do them in, in the end. I hope we will not see a repeat of the Mac, which was ahead of everybody back in 1984, but priced out of reach for most people, and has always remained a small niche. Maybe Apple thinks the iPhone is so far ahead of everybody that they can get away with anything, but the Mac was even farther ahead of DOS/Windows in its first decade, but people bought the slowly improving Wintel anyway. And then basically the same thing happened at NeXT, which was again a decade ahead of everybody, but went nowhere because of the low low minimum entrance fee of $10,000.

The iPod is Apple's only dominant product, because the price premium is not crazy. The brand name competing media players have some extra fluff and features, but usually don't cost much less (if at all). The iPod is priced right for mainstream dominance. The iPhone is not.

Hardware wise, it's clear from the iTouch that they can make a healthy profit if the iPhone was sold unlocked for €399. At €499 or €599, they would have margins that others can only dream of. Selling it for €999 (or €399 plus mandatory 2-year contract for minimum €1176 ) is just plain greed. Yes, I do think they have a great product, and that's why I think they could do some real damage to the Nokias, SEs and Samsungs if they were priced with reasonable margins of, say, 30%. But it seems Apple always likes getting lots of profit out of a small number of people better than getting less spread over a big number of people.

Of course, it's their product, and they can charge as much it as they like. I just hope they don't get so arrogant to think that they're so far ahead of their competition that they're untouchable. Remember the Mac. Remember NeXT.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

I don't really see a problem with this. Obviously T-mobile and Apple want people to be locked to their networks but to play ball they're selling unlocked phones at an insane mark up. I don't think anyone planning on taking them to court because its an unfair price will have any ground to stand on because its their product, they can sell them at the price they want, we're not forced to buy an iPhone after all.

Its now obvious that they can't stop people buying unlocked phones due to the law, however, they can make it an incredibly unattractive deal to buy an unlocked iPhone.

On a plus side though, having legally unlocked iPhones in the marketplace will make it a hell of a lot easier for future hacked unlocks. An unlocked iPhone with complete compatibility with all future firmware updates will make life a hell of a lot easier for hackers to break other iPhones.

 

[Motley]

I can smell freedom

Freedom smells expensive.

 

[ct-scan]

I'm so happy...

That I'm not some whiny user who "needs" an unlocked cell...seems like more hassle that it's worth.

Then again, AT&T Wireless in Chicago works perfectly fine...has great coverage, and the prices are very reasonable. I even dropped my previous carrier (TMobile) to go to them...but didn't pay a penny for that either since my contract was over.

Either way, people are making way too much of a big deal about it...bringing the courts into it because they don't like when two companies do business together. Do people have nothing better to do with their lives???? Get a job.

 

[shorty116]

what i'm interested in is if this is really apple's suggested price or just the price t-mobile picked to keep their "loss" low, for not selling the 18 months contract…

 

[Archie-]

This is what I see as the key point in this. This means that there is a software update of some kind that removed any network dependance and (assumed) activation. Not that it is a surprise, but get an example in the right hands and you've got some definite possibilities.

The 1,000 euro price tag is about par for the course given other unlocked high end phones like the HTC advantage. No surprise or concern there, phones are pricy.
-Jim

The Advantage has 8GB, 3G, GPS and a VGA screen, and is 480 euros on a 40 euro contract, and 750 euros unlocked. Not really comparable or par for the course.

 

[MrCrowbar]

What would stop someone from buying the unlocked iPhone and copying the unlocked software to another phone? It seems to me you'd be assured no update would break your iPhone.

I guess they might have a registry in iTunes that stores the unlocked phones' serial numbers, and will send you the locked software updates. But still, you should be able to copy the unlocked software each time it is updated, right?

Well, they already unlock locked german iPhones for free. I guess T-Mobile just made a deal with apple so Apple gets most of the money, close to what Apple would get if it was a contract. That way T-Mobile's off the hook without a lawsuit.

Still, 999 Euros, that can get you the low end Macbook in Europe or a black one in the US. I wouldn't pay that for a thing that makes calls, plays music and videos on a small screen and do awkward internet browsing. I'll wait for an unlocked iPhone nano or something. I don't need internet on the go really, I just want a phone that can make calls and do SMS, can sync with my Mac's address book and isn't a total pain in the *** to use. I got a recent Sony Ericsson and it's terrible on some points. For example if I missed a call, the quick launch button brings up the "missed calls" window... and the music playback button is right opposite of the volume buttons so it happened to me more than once that, during a call, I wanted to make it louder and one of the pre-installed songs started playing through the speaker. The walkman function is useless by the way if you have more than 10 songs on the thing.

I want something like that:

 

[guzhogi]

I'll admit, I don't know anything about subsidies or anything like that, but 999 euros for an unlocked iPhone and 600 to unlock it is a lot. I wonder how much of that is from the lack of subsidies, how much is for tariffs, and how much is just T-Mobile & Apple being greedy. While I'd like an unlocked iPhone, that's just way to much. Plus, I don't make that many calls, either.

 

[DTphonehome]

People, I'm quite sure Apple has no intention of selling any of these at 1000 (don't have euro symbol on my keyboard ). They are doing this as an FU to Vodaphone for suing them for locking the phone. Now T-mobile can say "what's the problem? We DO sell an unlocked iPhone!"

 

[kamiboy]

I don't understand this at all. What are these unclocked iPhones? Just the regular ones with a special "unlocked" firmware? If so, then what about future firmwares?

It would make more sense for them to have a hardware difference that segregates them from other iPhones, but then again the old locked iPhones can be unlocked for free so that does not make sense either.

 

[chicagostars]

hmmm

That I'm not some whiny user who "needs" an unlocked cell...seems like more hassle that it's worth.

Then again, AT&T Wireless in Chicago works perfectly fine...has great coverage, and the prices are very reasonable. I even dropped my previous carrier (TMobile) to go to them...but didn't pay a penny for that either since my contract was over.

Either way, people are making way too much of a big deal about it...bringing the courts into it because they don't like when two companies do business together. Do people have nothing better to do with their lives???? Get a job.

While not quite as harsh, I do agree with some of what you have said. I wonder what the feeling is among consumers who aren't clogging up message boards like this one. What do they care about any of these developments? Especially in the States where the lionshare of iPhone users are, but where the concept of unlocked phones is generally not considered.

 

[christian_k]

This could be easy using modern crypto technology.

To unlock a phone, just sign its IMEI with a secret digital key. The firmware then checks this digital signature with a known public key. Only if the signature is valid, you can use any sim. This way the firmware could be identical to locked phones (and could be updated),but hackers cannot transfer this signature to another device, because its IMEI is different.

Christian

I don't understand this at all. What are these unclocked iPhones? Just the regular ones with a special "unlocked" firmware? If so, then what about future firmwares?

It would make more sense for them to have a hardware difference that segregates them from other iPhones, but then again the old locked iPhones can be unlocked for free so that does not make sense either.

 

[gifford]

I sincerely hope so. I think that £720 for the iPhone is a TOTAL DISGRACE! Apple/T-Mobile aren't doing themselves any favours and should be ashamed.

IMO, anyone who buys the iPhone costing that much is clearly either too rich or totally dumb, or both.

or is just screwed on enough to realize iPhones dont grow on trees

 

[0007776]

now that these phones are unlocked, is there anything to stop hackers from just manually downloading and installing the unlocked firmware? or did Apple do somthing like remove all other languages from the unlocked firmware?

 

[nagromme]

I guess the next law suit to be filed against Apple will be for charging too much money for an unlocked phone.

Important: be sure to assume Apple is solely responsible for T-Mobile's response and pricing, and that T-Mobile did not have any role in the decisions. Also assume that it's not T-Mobile (or AT&T) who wants an exclusive. They want their competition to be selling the iPhone too, but Apple wants fewer people buying iPhones. (Related: don't forget that Apple, not the music labels, is the one who wants DRM on iTunes music.)

They don't want to sell unlocked iPhones at all (Apple likely doesn't care, but the phone company does).

I don't know the behind-the-scenes details (nor do any of us) but that sounds about right to me.

A court ruled--on T-Mobile, not Apple, apparently--and T-Mobile complied.