So the iPhone hype (iHype?) is reaching fever pitch.
I’m struggling to get excited … yet.
I’m guessing it’s going to be years before they are available here in NZ.
And it doesn’t look good for those who were considering using something like Shipbuktu to get their hands on one …
“Then there is the issue of the iPhone being sim-locked. And I don’t just mean that the phone is locked, nope, the sim is locked physically into the phone! It can’t be removed. Seemingly there is a way to map your existing number to the sim in your iPhone – this will be part of the activation process. But you can’t take your sim out of the phone for any reason. What happens when you want to upgrade to a new phone? No idea. Presumably this will be straightforward if your new phone is another iPhone – but if it is not…”
From: Tom Raftery’s Social Media
Those in the US need to sign up for a two-year contract at US$60 per month.
Now that’s lock in!
UPDATE: (from this thread on GeekZone) apparently this video shows that you can actually remove the sim by poking a paper clip into this hole. So, not easy, but possible.
You are forgetting that in the US people are used to phones being locked. We think nothing of grabbing a SIM card out of one phone and moving it to another but in the US they have always had CDMA which don’t have SIM cards.
Don’t get me wrong I think it sucks how you won’t^H^H^H^H might not be able to remove the SIM card but just wait a couple of days before the hacks start and then we will really see how locked down it is.
It is a nice piece of kit but still very 1.0 in some features like no MMS, no 3G, etc. Time will tell and hopefully the next release will be 3G and hacked.
I think you might want to look at this:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070627_POGUE_GRAPHIC.html
Particularly the bit that reads:
“If you insert a pin or an unfolded paper clip into the pinhole and push hard, the preinstalled SIM card tray pops out. Any recent AT&T SIM card should work, although only after iPhone activation in the iTunes software.”
Doesn’t sound like a physically locked in SIM to me.
The other catch is that you can’t even use it as an iPod without activation via AT&T. So even if it were unlocked, there’d be no using it for anything other than a paperweight unless Apple supported activation on foreign networks. Look on the bright side; with 1 in 5 US adults wanting one, by the time it does get to NZ all those American beta testers should have refined the product!
I think this is less about being locked into one network and more about being disposable. Apple want to create the ultimate device, but still want you to upgrade it every 2 years, so they make it disposable by locking in the sim, locking in the battery and leaving plenty of room for upgrades. In 2 years time – everyone will be ready to throw away their iPhone so they can have the new 60GB version that supports 3G on a choice of networks.