Will Unlocking/Jailbreaking my iphone work?

[adibear]

I'm an American student studying in England for a while. The iPhone 3gs I had with me (which was jailbroken and unlocked) had an unfortunate incident with a bottle of orange juice. The apple store here in London will give me a new iphone for 119 pounds, but the new phone will still be locked to AT&T (I need it unlocked so it will work with my wireless provider O2). The apple guy said contact AT&T to see if they'll factory unlock it, but they won't. I asked him if it would have the ios5 software on it and he said no. I have no idea how this locking/unlocking scheme works, but as I understand there isn't a current jailbreak for ios5 right? There are a ton of little shops near my dorm that offer unlocking services. My question is--is there any other version of firmware that can't be unlocked right now? I'm afraid they might brick the phone. I don't know what the firmware will be on the new phone, just that it won't be ios5.

Thanks.

Adi

 

[labman]

at&t won't unlock it but go for a try. best option sell it nuy a unlocked one or put the 6.15 Ipad baseband read up on it before you do it.

 

[chuckd83]

While I was living in Singapore, I replaced my AT&T locked iPhone through Apple Care and they returned an unlocked phone. This is because the phone is associated with the previous owner's profile which is factory unlocked. The problem is...once you restore, your AT&T profile will be associated with the new phone and iTunes will lock it.

Long story short, you may have luck getting an unlocked phone back from Apple, but you can never restore it.