$1500 German iPhones Unlock Via iTunes

Last week, there was press of unlocked iPhones as the result of the T-Mobile vs. Vodafone lawsuit. T-Mobile lost the suit and as a result have to sell an unlocked iPhone. To keep anyone from actually buying it, they set the price astronomically high, at €999, or $1500 American. There were really only two possibilities for how the $1500 iPhone would be unlocked: one, they would do it for you at the store. If they could unlock from the point of sale, hackers would figure out how Apple did it in the baseband radio and we’d all get unlocked phones. Apple clearly couldn’t do that, so they instead do it from iTunes. If someone purchases an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, their IMEI (kind of like a unique serial number for your iPhone) is put into a database. And when that iPhone is activated, it shows up as unlocked. Presto, that’s it!

And now that there’s official iTunes software to unlock, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that eventually we’ll get some iTunes hacks in there that will simulate the iTunes unlock.

If you’re looking to translate the German from the image above: “Unlock Complete. Your iPhone has been successfully unlocked. Click continue to set [?] and sync your iPhone.”

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