One for the rumor mill: Off-price iPhones not unlocked

June 06, 2010

Bloggers were all over a rumor in late March 2010 - before Steve Jobs announced a target date for the new 4G iPhone - that Apple was going to start selling a version of the iPhone at list price without tying it to an AT&T contract.

Online iPhone gurus went hunting and sure enough: Apple stores were saying that consumers could purchase an iPhone for $499 for a 3G version up to $699 for a 3GS. However the question of whether those phones were "unlocked" produced nothing but static until Endgadget tracked down the sad truth:

Yes, those iPhones can be had without an extended contract, but they are definitely NOT unlocked. They're still tied to AT&T carrier network.

And this is supposed to be a big deal? As the kids say: Well, duh.

Schemes like this are what keep iPhone users on the alert for quality "jailbreaking" software that will unlock the full potential of their Apple smartphones. Thankfully, software solutions such as MyUnlock Iphone continue to gather super-satisfied customers as well as staying on top of unlocking the latest updates.

No one denies that Apple has come up with an outstanding product in the iPhone. After all, according to Wired magazine, Steve Jobs' vision to create a telephone that works with a touch-screen user interface was simply genius. No doubt about it. Kudos to the man with the vision and to the harried Apple engineers who brought it about.

The annoying thing about the iPhone, however, is that for three years since the beautiful device was introduced, consumers around the world have been held hostage to the partnership between Apple and AT&T. And that's to say nothing about Apple's traditional paranoia about letting out even a smidgen of its software code to third-party developers.

The sad part of this scenario is that hey, Apple, the 3rd-party dev teams have already figured it out. That's why jailbreaking software solutions such as MyUnlock Iphone are on the market, helping consumers achieve the functionality that Apple and AT&T seem determined to keep from them.

For instance, the recent announcement that a 4G iPhone OS is coming "this summer" has users hoping for a new iPhone as well. After all, that plain black background clutter up with all those icons is getting pretty old. What's amazing is that more iPhone users aren't lining to unlock their phones and get such brilliant apps as new backgrounds and organization capabilities right now.

That's what a software solution like MyUnlock Iphone does for customers: It unlocks all the functionality of their iPhones so that they can connect to any wireless network they like and use any third-party application they want. "Jailbreaking" an iPhone allows its user to download apps such as Winterboard, which can turn that dull black background into a brilliant design of the owner's choosing. Or a user can add Categories, which lets them organize those messy icons into logical folders, cleaning up the springboard and making finding the right app a whole lot easier. That's something that Apple won't have until this summer's new version at the earliest.

Winterboard and Categories are only two examples of third-party applications that unlocking a smartphone with MyUnlock Iphone makes possible. So why wait on Apple any longer?