German unlocked phones still need iTunes

Thanks to legal wranglings between rival German mobile operators Vodafone and T-Mobile, the iPhone is available as an unlocked option, albeit a rather expensive one. But just how is such unlocking accomplished? Word on the virtual street is that it all stems from iTunes, naturally. But here’s the catch: the phone that you walk into the store and buy is no different from any other iPhone.

Instead, you spend the extra money (remember, these units command the princely sum of €999), and then, when you get home, you use iTunes to unlock your phone, just as you’d normally use iTunes to activate phone service. Since unlocking relies on the fact that Apple has whitelisted your phone’s IMEI number (a unique identifier), there’s a lag of 24 hours before unlocking can proceed. Also, given the whitelist method, you can’t really trick T-Mobile into giving you an unlocked iPhone for the price of a normal iPhone, alas.

[via Gizmodo]

Category: Hardware, Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Nov 26 2007, 2:40 PM ET

• © 2007 Mac Publishing, LLC.
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Community Standards