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Verizon-Branded iPhone 5 Ships Unlocked, Works With Other Networks
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Geek.com: "If you're planning to get a new Verizon iPhone 5, there might be a little bonus feature included that neither Apple nor Verizon are keen to admit. As units have started making it out of the stores, it appears that the Verizon version of the device is fully unlocked out of the box and able to connect to any GSM network. Verizon support is apparently confirming to customers that the device is unlocked. At the very least, this doesn't appear to be a mistake. It likely has to do with the way the iPhone's radios are designed along with the implementation of LTE on Verizon. This might make the device a little more palatable to those on the fence about upgrading, especially for anyone that travels."
TFA doesn't make sense. "Able to connect to any GSM network...." No kidding. That's what my unlocked gen 1 phone does. Connect and not be 'roaming' status - that's different.
They gloss over the real point, which is dropping a new SIM into it while traveling so you are always local.
You can thank Google for pushing for Open Access rules during bidding for the spectrum:
"(e) Handset locking prohibited. No licensee may disable features on handsets it provides to customers, to the extent such features are compliant with the licensee's standards pursuant to paragraph (b)of this section, nor configure handsets it provides to prohibit use of such handsets on other providers' networks." [bold mine]
Verizon recently got smacked down according to these rules and had to permit tethering without a fee.
Elsewhere?
What, New Mexico or someplace foreign like that?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Most people, U.S. or not, spend most of their time not travelling.
The important difference between U.S. and Europe is that all the networks and phones use GSM. That lowers costs and promotes competition — hence the unlocked phones. When you can move your phone to any network, there's a big market for unlocked ones. With less competition here, carriers can get away with bundling and long-term contracts, which means locked-in phones.
Speaking of which Verizon's network is not GSM. So are these iPhones dual-network or what?
Oh please. I'm an Android user, and I'm not noticing a dearth of Android articles. In any case, this is newsworthy.
No, they don't, at least not in most European countries, which is why there are lots of sites that offer 'unlocking' services for specific operators. These include the UK, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, etc.
You can "travel" quite a bit in the US and never leave the US, whereas a similar distance in Europe might consist of crossing the borders of many different countries. If every US state had a different cell company things might be different, but as it stands now you can go coast to coast with the same provider (including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico).
this is my sig
From a technical perspective, would this mean that the iPhone 5 on Sprint would be unlocked too? It would be nice.
I'm sorry your delicate sensibilities were offended by an article about the new iPhone on a tech site. My understanding is there are mechanisms available to filter out the news you are incapable of handling.
You might want to revise the "everywhere", because phones are certainly sold locked here in the UK.
More at the link:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/iphone5-lte-model/
Is the Wired story incorrect? Is there more to this? Or is "able to connect to any GSM network" totally bogus?
More details here, including this blurb from Verizon:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/want-global-lte-roaming-on-iphone-5-dont-buy-it-from-att/
Perhaps this should read "able to connect to any LTE network that runs on compatible frequencies"?
Why would Verizon care? The V phone won't work on almost any other network at LTE speeds, because the antenna/firmware hasn't been tuned to allow it to work on ATT bands. Your minimum contractual commitment is 24 months at $50+/mo, even for high end corporate clients, so $200+1200>>sales price, and if you go anywhere else with the phone you're not using their network so it's like free money.
FWIW, this is identical to the way Verizon iPads are provisioned. I can drop in a Verizon SIM or an AT&T SIM and it works with both carriers (though on the 3G/GSM network for AT&T). It's why I bought the Verizon iPad to begin with.
Of course, you'll have to go cut down a SIM to fit in the !@#@#^ microsim slot if you want to switch.
Odd bit of trivia: did you know that really big corporate clients get unlimited data on the iPhone (well, probably any phone) for $20/mo? Strange but true.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sure they will. Call and ask for global-access or something like that. Assuming you've had the phone for more than 60 days, they will unlock it and you can use a SIM card in it to get GSM/3G access when outside the US - simple and easy. They do "claim" that you can't use the SIM card while in the US - that Verizon CDMA will take preference - this may be true - I didn't test it. I sounds like the iPnone5 doesn't have that (potential) limitation. I think the unlock is permanent, or mostly so, since when I upgraded my iPhone4S to IOS6, the first message to pop up on iTunes was 'congratulations, your phone is unlocked now.'
This being Slashdot, would it not make sense for there to be more Android articles? Is there just too much Apple astroturfing going on Slashdot or is it just me?
I was just thinking that there is a slightly less iPhone astroturfing on Slashdot compared to the iPhone launch in previous years. In the past you would get 3 or 4 stories in a row on the iPhone here.
So IMHO things are improving.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
ipad?
"neither Apple nor Verizon are keen to admit" "Verizon support is apparently confirming to customers that the device is unlocked"
Fuck, why bother?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
That's a mostly accurate summary of the outwardly visible effects a nontechnical end user who only wants to "surf and talk" might see, but it doesn't quite describe the actual problem. If you know exactly what's going on behind the scenes, there ARE ways to do simultaneous voice + data on Sprint (though most of them require spending more money for thirdparty services and doing an end-run around Sprint itself).
Let's start with voice calls. If you want to terminate a voice call through Sprint, there's exactly one way it can happen: via circuit-switched CDMA. The call travels between Sprint and whomever is at the other end of the call over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Between Sprint's switching center and the phone, the call is transported via CDMA2000 voice.
No Sprint phone I'm aware of can simultaneously handle an active CDMA voice call and IP data using either EVDO or 1xRTT. It's physically impossible due to the way both are implemented on Sprint's phones. HOWEVER, in most of Sprint's recent phones, there's no hardware reason why you can't have an active voice call AND use data via Wimax, LTE, and/or wifi. Some Sprint phones have shipped with firmware that disabled data use during voice calls, but that was mainly due to tech support and demographics. Basically, they didn't feel like dealing with less-technical users who couldn't be assumed to understand the difference between the different data modes, be aware of their connectivity from minute-to-minute, and actively manage their data connection mode in order to do both at once.
That said, there's nothing (besides battery life and added subscription cost) to stop you from acquiring VoIP service from someone besides Sprint, running a SIP client on your phone, and making simultaneous VoIP calls while using any working data mode, including EVDO and (maybe, bandwidth permitting) 1xRTT. You can even use call forwarding to forward your incoming Sprint calls to the VoIP number. The downside is that your phone will drain the battery a LOT faster, because you'll have to actively poll for incoming calls (normal incoming calls are handled by having the phone poll Sprint's towers via the same mechanism used for text messages; with VoIP, the phone is polling twice as much, and has to maintain an active data connection to do it). One compromise is to make your outgoing calls via VoIP, but let your incoming calls continue to come in through Sprint (losing EVDO/1xRTT data connectivity when it happens).
So... you might be wondering... if end users can get simultaneous voice+data, even over CDMA data modes, by using VoIP service acquired independently of Sprint... why can't Sprint itself do it? Basically, their switching equipment can't handle it. Nothing that couldn't mostly be hacked around, but it would have been expensive, likely to cause problems (witness the thrashing many wimax Sprint phones do when they can't make up their mind between EVDO and wimax, and just keep breaking the data connection and thrashing wildly between the two), and would have still left Sprint with compromises compared to HSPA+.
For what it's worth, these problems are nothing new... GSM networks went through the exact same hardware problem 10 years ago when they transitioned from TDMA-based GSM/GPRS/EDGE to WCDMA-based UMTS/HS(D|U)PA(+). The main difference is that European phone companies actually WERE able to buy off the shelf switching equipment to deal with it, whereas Sprint would have had to cobble its own half-baked solution in-house. Qualcomm WAS actually working on SVDO to replace EVDO (doing more or less the same thing as HSPA+), but most CDMA carriers in other countries decided to skip EVDO and just transition to UMTS/HS(D|U)PA(+) instead. Sprint and Verizon couldn't do that, because they didn't have the pair of 10MHz uplink and downlink channels in all of their markets.
Sprint AND Verizon together would have been enough to motivate Qualcomm to finish development of SVDO, but Verizon hoped to strike a deathblow against Sprint by formally aband
Speaking of which Verizon's network is not GSM. So are these iPhones dual-network or what?
Yes:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
They just don't work on all LTE bands.