Apple said it sold 4 million iPhones, AT&T has activated 2 million. Does that mean 2 million unlocked iphones?

[cheezy321]

http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9857622-37.html

So I just read an article on how the iPhones inventory is piling up in some places. The article states that apple has sold 3.7 million iPhones in 2007, but AT&T only claims 2 million activated iPhones.

I found this pretty interesting, and it looks like unlocked iPhones are rampant.

I personally own an unlocked iPhone and I bought my iPhone the day they announced a software unlock for it.

I was just wondering how many other AT'ers know someone or personally own an unlocked iPhone....I figured I would get a good response here because a lot of us are in tune with the latest technology and most of our friends are the same...

 

[Gibson486]

yes, they sold 3.7 million to vendors....but vendors (namely ATT) only sold 2 million....hence the piling up in inventory. In other words, close to 2 million have not been sold yet.

 

[Parasitic]

They sold 4 mil iPhones but if there's a high return rate then the figures are double-counting actual # of iPhone customers.

Apple sells one iPhone to Bob. It didn't work for him so Bob returned it.
Apple:1 Customer: 0

Apple sells another iPhone to John, who returned it for warranty repair and Apple ships another phone over to John.
Apple: 2 Customer: 1

So the above gross sale is 3, while the actual amount is 1; I'm guessing that the 4 mil is a gross shipping amount from Apple?

 

[RichieZ]

i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

 

[Epic Fail]

What service are you using with your unlocked iPhone?

 

[mjrand]

How exactly can you buy an iphone without also signing a two year contract with at&t?

 

[Parasitic]

Originally posted by: RichieZ
i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

Man I can't believe how awesome my Pearl is compared to my old smartphones (went through a Treo 600, Audiovox SMT5600, and Cingular 8125 and Samsung Blackjack).

 

[RichieZ]

Originally posted by: mjrand
How exactly can you buy an iphone without also signing a two year contract with at&t?

you can buy the phone at the apple store and you are supposed to activate it at home through itunes.

 

[RichieZ]

Originally posted by: Parasitic

Originally posted by: RichieZ
i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

Man I can't believe how awesome my Pearl is compared to my old smartphones (went through a Treo 600, Audiovox SMT5600, and Cingular 8125 and Samsung Blackjack).

it is great, i also had the treo 650 in the past, the one horrible thing about it is that its not 3g. so i can't be on the phone and get new emails coming in at the same time.

 

[mjrand]

Originally posted by: RichieZ

Originally posted by: mjrand
How exactly can you buy an iphone without also signing a two year contract with at&t?

you can buy the phone at the apple store and you are supposed to activate it at home through itunes.

Really? I've never heard of that before with cell phone deals. You don't have to sign any contract at all in-store? You just go there and buy it and that's it? Can I pay in cash for it too so that they can't connect me to the phone? I remember hearing some rumour that they wouldn't let you pay cash.

 

[bigrash]

I'm sure they sold a lot overseas too (which would account for some of the 2 million you think is unlocked.

 

[cheezy321]

Originally posted by: yamadakun
What service are you using with your unlocked iPhone?

I have it working on tmobile. I have everything up and running on it, even including unlimited EDGE access for only 5.99. Tmobile T-zones rocks

 

[pm]

I have one. Three of my co-workers have unlocked iPhones as well. And then at work there's another 10 co-workers or so with unhacked AT&T iPhones. I'm on T-Mobile as well - I'm paying about half of what I'd pay on AT&T for the same service.

And, yes, you just walk into an AT&T or Apple store, ask for an iPhone, pay for it and leave. No commitments, no plans, no signing anything.

It's gotten a bit harder to unlock them, but it's still possible. And the hacked 1.1.3 firmware was released tonight.

 

[mjrand]

So is it a bad idea to pay with a credit card since they'll get my information? Will they come after me for not activating a new AT&T account?

 

[pm]

For what reason could they come after you? You bought an item, paid the price they asked, and never committed to do anything with it.

They have no excuse or reason to come after you - you never agreed to anything, never signed anything. There no contract for it, you paid money for it, it's yours. If you want to use it as a hockey puck what can they do about it?

I paid with a credit card - in fact it's the only way to buy one. But what can they do?

I scoured the paperwork when I got home to make sure that I never agreed to anything. I even read the end-user license agreement from beginning to end. It doesn't force you to sign up with AT&T. It wasn't in there anywhere. You have at least a week to return it. If you are concerned buy it and then read the paperwork - but when I did this, I didn't see anything in there that read anything like "by purchasing this item you commit to a two year contract with AT&T". There was no fine print that read anything like this.

 

[zig3695]

Originally posted by: RichieZ
i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

QFT.

i had a pearl for a year, best damn phone i ever used. it was simply a marvel piece of technology and software.

then i had to leave blackberry and get a moto q9c. worst decision of all my phones. motorola sucks. windows mobile is even worse.

blackberries are the cadillac's of phones, no doubt about it.

 

[mjrand]

Originally posted by: pm
For what reason could they come after you? You bought an item, paid the price they asked, and never committed to do anything with it.

They have no excuse or reason to come after you - you never agreed to anything, never signed anything. There no contract for it, you paid money for it, it's yours. If you want to use it as a hockey puck what can they do about it?

I paid with a credit card - in fact it's the only way to buy one. But what can they do?

I scoured the paperwork when I got home to make sure that I never agreed to anything. I even read the end-user license agreement from beginning to end. It doesn't force you to sign up with AT&T. It wasn't in there anywhere. You have at least a week to return it. If you are concerned buy it and then read the paperwork - but when I did this, I didn't see anything in there that read anything like "by purchasing this item you commit to a two year contract with AT&T". There was no fine print that read anything like this.

Ok good to know. Thanks for the information and the advice.

Side question. I've heard all kinds of things about how jailbreaking your phone breaks some features on the phone and can brick the phone. Is it possible to unlock the iPhone without jailbreaking it as well? Also if I only unlock it, will it cause any problems with the 1.1.3 firmware or will it cause any problems with any of the features/programs?

 

[pm]

There's a particular set of definitions with iPhones: "jailbreaking" it is opening up the filesystem to reading/writing - which gives access to unofficial 3rd party apps. "activating" it is getting past the activation logo that you get when you first turn it on, but also enabling the use of YouTube and other apps. And then "unlocking" which removes the restriction on tying it to a particular carrier.

You need to jailbreak to unlock or to activate - meaning you can't activate or unlock without exposing the filesystem to read/write access because activating and unlocking require files to be written.

As far as bricking, well, it's a risk when hacking anything - that you might destroy it. The tutorials at places like: http://iphone.unlock.no/ are pretty good. If you follow them very carefully and take your time, the risk is fairly low.

If you have a 1.1.1 version iPhone (which were sold between Sept and late Oct) that hasn't been updated to more recent firmware releases, then jailbreaking is as simple and painless as visiting a website and unlocking is as easy and risk-free as clicking on an icon. But other versions can be harder to unlock - particularly anything sold after Oct.

The status with 1.1.3 is a bit weird. There's a hacked 1.1.3 release which jailbreaks the iPhone, but there have been reports that it doesn't work well with plenty of users. The release was effectively leaked by one hacker on the hacking team and the rest of the hacking group pretty much disowned the guy. They say there will be a later release which solves the issues that some people are having. I haven't updated beyond 1.1.1 - which works fine for me.

 

[cheezy321]

Originally posted by: zig3695

Originally posted by: RichieZ
i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

QFT.

i had a pearl for a year, best damn phone i ever used. it was simply a marvel piece of technology and software.

then i had to leave blackberry and get a moto q9c. worst decision of all my phones. motorola sucks. windows mobile is even worse.

blackberries are the cadillac's of phones, no doubt about it.

If blackberries are the cadillac's, then iPhones are the Ferrari's

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: cheezy321

Originally posted by: zig3695

Originally posted by: RichieZ
i had one unlocked it, used it for a while and then went back to my blackjack and then onto a blackberry curve

QFT.

i had a pearl for a year, best damn phone i ever used. it was simply a marvel piece of technology and software.

then i had to leave blackberry and get a moto q9c. worst decision of all my phones. motorola sucks. windows mobile is even worse.

blackberries are the cadillac's of phones, no doubt about it.

If blackberries are the cadillac's, then iPhones are the Ferrari's

I don't know about that... iPhones are more like Prius's - people who own them love them, are smug irritating people who seem insufferably pleased with themselves because of their Prius/iPhone that they own, and spend a lot of time convincing other people that they should buy one too.

(and, yes, this describes me too. )