14 DAY TRIAL // iPhone fans from Hong Kong will be able to purchase the handheld directly from Apple, without having to worry about the device being locked in any network. This is happening despite the fact that no announcements were made beforehand – yet the listings confirm it to be true.
The price for an 8GB phone is 692 US dollars ($5,400 HK), while the 16GB model costs 794 US dollars ($6,200 HK). iPhones in the region can be “activated with any wireless carrier,” according to Apple, the only requirement being that a carrier's SIM card be installed prior to syncing with iTunes 8.
iPhones usually come locked, preventing the use of a device on any network other than the one that it was originally bought for. This is because Apple partners with carriers that lock the SIM into their network. Until now, in Hong Kong, the iPhones were available only trough 3HK, a mobile network owned by Hutchinson.
The unlocked iPhones that are going to be sold in Hong Kong might prove to be unique, since the South China Morning Post reported that a stripped-down iPhone with no 3G and no Wi-Fi was being prepared for the rest of the country. This would only reflect the Chinese government's tendency to use only the local 3G standard, the TD-SCDMA instead of HSPA.
Could this be seen as a good opportunity for iPhone fans from all over the world to take a trip to Hong Kong in order to get an unlocked 3G iPhone? Probably not, because the unlocking of the devices in Hong Kong might actually be a sign that, soon, this will happen in their own country as well.
Either way, an unlocked device only means that you can insert any SIM card in it. This comes in handy when you have two phones and, say, you run out of battery on one of them and you need to switch SIMs. This seems to be the only major downside of a locked phone, since all other things that might come up are pretty easy to solve, especially if the device has PC connectivity.