14 DAY TRIAL // Apple's iPhone has yet to launch and the knock-offs have already arrived. While the cheap Chinese rip-offs are easy to spot from miles away, other sources are saying that they will be selling the real-deal iPhone, unlocked and ready for use. Such is the case of PureMobile.com, an online cell phone retailer, that is offering unlocked iPhones in its store.
Apple and AT&T have struck a strong partnership over the iPhone, one whose terms are unique in the industry and that other carriers such as Verizon balked at and walked away from. Considering all this, it seems unlikely that either company will be letting the coveted devices run around unlocked. While there would definitely be great demand for unlocked iPhones for those who do not want A&T subscriptions for whatever reason, such a thing is unlikely, if not downright impossible.
Interestingly enough, PureMobile doesn't actually allow you to buy anything, only saying that the device is 'coming soon.' But if iPhones were somehow hacked to lose the AT&T shackles, they would not work right, if they even worked at all. Quite a number of features, such as Visual Voicemail require compatibility from the carrier and a system that lets you randomly access your voicemail. Other carriers don't have this and even if they did have something similar it would probably have to be modified in order to work with the specifications of the iPhone. But even this is a best-case scenario. Apple guards its offerings actively and just like they take steps to ensure that OS X stays on Macs and is hard to install on generic PCs, they might have taken similar steps with the iPhone. If the phone checks to make sure that it is still on AT&T's network then unlocking it would prove useless as it would simply refuse to work with anything else.
Exactly what the deal is with unlocked iPhones remains to be seen, but most likely these online stores are trying to hitch a ride on the bandwidth wagon and get hits to their sites by offering vaporware.