[Koralatov]

One of the girls from my work is going to the States in about a month, and I'm thinking about giving her the cash and getting her to buy me a 16GB iPhone. Even with GST in Illinois, it still comes out about £100 cheaper than it would be to buy it here. However, it does raise one important question: can I convert it to a UK iPhone? I'd be using it on an O2 contract (I'd just convert my current one over to one of the iPhone ones).

I found a post on Mac Rumors using Google that says that it can be done:

You need to do a restore of the device and put the phone into recovery mode and then when you do a restore if you are using a uk version of iTunes it should restore to the uk version of the software which will allow you to use your o2 sim. Remember if you are not planning to use the contract you buy from o2 for the iphone you will need to jailbreak the device.

Is this actually the case? Is it really that easy to convert it from US to UK iPhone?

[Peter]

I've just been using the US firmware and had no problems - but i'm interested too!

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by Peter 

I've just been using the US firmware and had no problems - but i'm interested too!

You mean you just put in an O2 sim and it worked fine? It turns out that the question is largely academic now as I've got a £54 store credit from Apple for a dead eMac, but I'd still be very interested to know whether it's possible.

[Peter]

no, i imported an american iPhone and unlocked it to run on a british Orange sim.