German iPhones unlocked via iTunes

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 27 November 2007 05:24

Your IT - Mobility

The unlocking of T-Mobile iPhones is being carried out via iTunes, according to a German Mac news and rumours site.

According to Macnotes.de, when customers pay the extra €600 to have their iPhone freed from the T-Mobile network, their name and the phone's IMEI is forwarded to Apple. Subsequently activating the iPhone via the iTunes application on a PC or Mac also removes the SIM lock, an operation that only takes a few seconds.

However, some Macnotes readers report that the administrative side of the process can take 24 hours or more before the phone unlocks, something that is causing some disquiet.

Once the phone is unlocked, SIMs can be swapped freely without needing to reactivate the phone each time.

The ability to unlock the iPhone may be short lived. T-Mobile's challenge to the injunction obtained by Vodafone that required the company to offer unlocked iPhones is scheduled to be heard by a German court on Thursday.

If T-Mobile wins, it would almost certainly go back to offering the iPhone only with a service contract. Whether T-Mobile and Apple would be entitled to refund customers' €600 and re-lock the iPhone remains to be seen.

There is also a possibility that people interested in the iPhone's inner workings may monitor communications between Apple's servers and iTunes, and between iTunes and the iPhone in an attempt to find an unlocking method that works with the current firmware. The existing technique requires a software downgrade before unlocking, but once an iPhone has been liberated from the original carrier it can be upgraded to the current version.

The iPhone goes on sale in France this Friday. According to some reports, Orange will also offer the unlocked iPhone at a €600 premium to the normal €399 price.