Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ctt1wbw · Sep 23, 2008, 06:32 AM

Say I bought an iPhone outright, if that is possible... Do I still have to have a two year contract with it? Anybody done this?

mduell · Sep 23, 2008, 10:58 PM

You can buy a contract-free 3G iPhone from AT&T for $599; it's still carrier locked so you'd have to use AT&T's prepaid service.

BRussell · Sep 23, 2008, 11:36 PM

You could get an original model iphone on ebay and then unlock it and do whatever you want with it. But I don't know if the 3G models have been successfully unlocked yet.

ctt1wbw · Sep 24, 2008, 06:43 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

You can buy a contract-free 3G iPhone from AT&T for $599; it's still carrier locked so you'd have to use AT&T's prepaid service.

That's interesting. Are they the same rates as the normal contract service? I haven't heard of this before with the iPhone.

CorpITGuy · Sep 24, 2008, 07:37 AM

No, they're a lot more expensive. Prepaid will always be higher unless you very rarely use your phone.

ctt1wbw · Sep 24, 2008, 08:20 AM

Man, I want an iPhone so bad. However, I HATE ATT Wireless. I'm not sure what to do. I think I'll just go with TMobile. Nobody has anything bad to say about them.

Simon · Sep 24, 2008, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by ctt1wbw

Man, I want an iPhone so bad. However, I HATE ATT Wireless. I'm not sure what to do. I think I'll just go with TMobile. Nobody has anything bad to say about them.

If you want to buy a US iPhone that means you'll have to get an unlocked 2.5G iPhone. Even the contract-free US iPhones are still locked to AT&T. And so far there is no software hack to remove this carrier lock on the iPhone 3G.

In some countries like Belgium you can get carrier-unlocked iPhones. But I doubt flying to Belgium just to buy an iPhone is a very cheap solution.

vmarks · Sep 24, 2008, 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by ctt1wbw

Man, I want an iPhone so bad. However, I HATE ATT Wireless. I'm not sure what to do. I think I'll just go with TMobile. Nobody has anything bad to say about them.

Are you kidding? TMobile is the classic example of a provider who underprovisions their network, so they overprice their services in an attempt to keep the numbers of people placing loads on the service low.
They're slowly trying to fix this by provisioning their 3G network, but it's a very slow rollout.

The TMobile service terms for unlimited internet on the G1 Android phone is 1GB of data a month. That's 30MB a day. Go over, and they throttle so much as to cut you off essentially. This is because they really can't handle users using their network like iPhone users do with ATT.

ctt1wbw · Sep 24, 2008, 10:46 PM

1 gig a month? I can do that in about a day. Holy ****.

CorpITGuy · Sep 25, 2008, 08:31 AM

Since the iPhone would only be on EDGE (even a 3G iPhone, since T-Mobile's 3G cannot be received by the iPhone's radio) it might actually be difficult to use more than 1GB per month.

-Q- · Sep 25, 2008, 09:29 AM

The 1GB limit has been rescinded:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/24/t...ndly-approach/

(At least in relation to their Android phone - not sure if other 3G phones have that limit.)

ctt1wbw · Sep 25, 2008, 09:56 AM

What do you think about that G1 phone? I saw the demo video today and thought it looked rather cool.

Eug · Sep 25, 2008, 07:10 PM

Hong Kong will have an unlocked phone. $800 for 16 GB. Expect it to be higher than that shipped to the states from eBay.

Originally Posted by ctt1wbw

What do you think about that G1 phone? I saw the demo video today and thought it looked rather cool.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...in_common.html

Andy8 · Sep 25, 2008, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by Eug

Hong Kong will have an unlocked phone. $800 for 16 GB. Expect it to be higher than that shipped to the states from eBay.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...in_common.html

Direct from the Apple Store online. Delicious.