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Ask HN: Did you buy your iPhone unlocked?
Hey HN. I am looking to finally get a new phone (still have the Galaxy SI). Looking to get the iPhone 5S.
Some background:
I live in Canada, but am currently planning to move to the USA for work sometime soon hopefully. But I'll probably be back and forth once that happens every so often.
I was wondering if anyone has thoughts on buying the iPhone unlocked for the extra cost vs probably waiting to get to the US and getting a plan with verizon or something.
I understand going on the two year contract with someone you need a plan for at least 50+ it seems, but with an unlocked phone you can find some for about $30. [1]
Has anyone done something similar? Or even bought an unlocked phone? How did that work out? I'd like a phone now and then when the move to US happens be able to easily transfer that to someone else. But if it would be cheaper to wait and get a plan with someone in the states I'd probably do that.
[1] http://www.tekrieg.com/news/unlocked-iphone-5s-is-it-worth-the-higher-price-tag/1004168/
- palidanx 13y agoIf you happen to pull a contract with at&t in the US, you can unlock your phone with http://swiftunlocks.com/ http://swiftunlocks.com/
- Jonovono 13y agoSo in this case you would buy the phone at the discount rate with a two year contract and then immediately be able to unlock it and move to another carrier or whatever?
- tartuffe78 13y agoBut you would still be locked into paying for that service for two years.
- staunch 13y agoI've seen unlocking services like this, and they cost money. Shouldn't it be possible to do this for free? Aren't they just exploiting some weakness with the unlock codes to generate their own?
- jareds 13y agoI bought an unlocked phone through the Apple online store for use with T-Mobile prepaid. It was interest free for two years with a new Barclay’s card. The total cost is less than $1 more than if I put down $299 through T-Mobile to get a locked phone with a postpaid plan. Since UI haven’t been happy with the 3G service on my 4 through T-Mobile I decided to go unlocked through Apple so I can transfer the phone to AIO Wireless if LTE doesn’t turn out to be better than 3G.
- bgar 13y agoI bought a used iPhone 5 (at&t but unlocked since then) on CL and it turned out that it was incompatible with Tmobile's network because it didn't support the AWS band 1700/2100[1]. So I went to the Apple store and had the phone replaced for a brand new factory unlocked one (for free!). IIRC after April of this year, all iPhone 5 variants were merged. 1: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5720 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5720
- aroch 13y agoNo, but I purchased it for my mother for her birthday and she's a very light data user (~200mb a month, at most) so she shares the dataplan with my father.