Posted by masseur
I've just been to a so-called 'Genius Bar' at an Apple store having noticed some degredation in my 3GS battery. This is going to my daughter on Thursday when my '4' arrives.
At first he checked it with some app they have on their mac and it showed the battery to be "ok". He consulted another member of the Genius Bar who viewed the details shown in the app and initially decided nothing needed to be done.
After some heated discussion he finally admitted it was 'borderline' and decided he would give me a brand new 3gs as replacement (having confirmed the stores don't give out refurbs).
Now, my 3gs is unlocked officially by O2 so I mentioned this and asked for confirmation that the replacement would therefore be unlocked. This seems reasonable as the unlocking is controlled by iTunes and I assumed that when the swap was done, the remaining warranty details (6 days left now) would be swapped to the new phone and so would anything else related.
We activated the new phone with my tmob sim in and behold.. an iphone 3gs locked to tmobile even though iphone don't officially sell the phone in this country yet! My daughter is on o2 so the phone needed to be on tmob for me for the next few days, then o2 for her thereafter.
So, I asked for my original 3gs back but we had already reset that to clear all my info. When we tried to activate it the mac he was using wouldn't do it as it hadn't been upgraded to itunes 9.2 and I'm running OS4. Indeed with iPhone OS4 being officially released tomorrow they didn't have a single mac in the shop that could activate my phone so I had to leave the Apple store with an unactivated iphone!
This is a bit of a rant but honestly, I ask myself these questions:-
1. Why can Apple not, under warranty, replace my officially unlocked iphone with another officially unlocked iphone?
2. Why are they trying to tie me to a single network, indeed one with which they clearly have no affiliation yet?
3. Why, one day before official release could they not find a single mac that could activate my iphone with OS4?
So much for 'Genius Bar'! eh?
Posted by SE-Naz
I had a major issue when my battery starting to play up on my 3GS... I mentioned it was unlocked and he said that I need to put in a O2 sim then put it in the other sim for it to become unlocked... I said I don't have an o2 sim on me and he said we can't do it... So I took the iPhone home to activate for it to work out...
Posted by masseur
...and did that sequence get you an unlocked 3gs again?
the guy I was dealing with professed to be a big expert but had no idea a) whether he would be able to activiate it with a tmob sim in the first place and b) whether it would be unlocked afterwards.
Surely a replacement handset needs to somehow be configured on Apple or phone company servers as a replacement for an unlocked phone in order for itunes to subsequently also unlock that one (and presumably no longer unlock the original if it gets refurbished, for example?
Posted by SE-Naz
Mine was a O2 replaced handset... When I got in a put in a Pre Pay sim and activated... then shortly after put my Voda sim in and the unlocked message appeared and my Voda sim was activated and working...
Posted by masseur
damn. I had an o2 sim with me today (in fact its the one that originally came in the 3gs when I got it payg last year), but the guy didn't mention this as solution.
He just got me to put my tmob sim in and the activation locked it and after that there was nothing that could be done. The O2 sim and my aussie sim both caused the iphone to display a message to insert a valid sim.
I'm going to have words on the phone tomorrow with the Apple Care team...
Posted by SE-Naz
Okk...
I think this is how it is going to work for the iPhone 4... If purchasing on contract or on pre pay it will get locked to the network you buy on... Unless SIMFREE of course...
Good luck with them... (It's their fault, the guy who was doing it for me said clearly I can not activate the phone unless you have an o2 sim first, so that is why I ended up taking it home to do myself...)
Posted by masseur
although I've heard the iphone 4's bought from Apple are supposed to be sim free, after todays experience I now have a little niggling worry that maybe this might happen on Thursday, i.e. the phone gets locked to whoever you first activate with, as it always did seem strange that Apple would flood the market with unlocked iphones... especially now as itunes seems happy to lock phones to carriers that are not even officially selling te device yet
Hmmm... I guess we'll see...
Posted by SE-Naz
I have been told by Apple Sales Rep and Voda Sales Rep... That direct SIMFREE will be unlocked... Only when buying with Network... will get locked... But will see as I would prefer if unlocked less hassle... 24 so not so far now...
Posted by voda_jon
So I was correct in thinking that all iPhones are sim free and when u activate on iTunes apple locks it depending on sim card/network sold on.
Only 4 days to wait to c if the 4's are the same lol.
Posted by masseur
here we go, I knew there was nothing to worry about as I was sure I read it somewhere official...
Your new iPhone. Direct from Apple and ready to use.
When you purchase your iPhone from the Apple Online Store, you’ll get it SIM-free. So you can sign up for service with the carrier of your choice and change your carrier at any time
still want to get a replacement unlocked 3gs sorted out though...
Posted by Bonovox
Why does it say July 14th
I thought it was 24th June?
Posted by SE-Naz
Take it back to them... as its their fault...
Its says 14 July now as they are not taking any more pre orders for the 24 june...
Posted by Bonovox
So it's not just O2 with the shortage? I guess now it's on every network there will be more demand & a shortage.
Posted by SE-Naz
Shortage across the board... as the demand was higher then expected...
I read that they got 600,000 Pre-orders...
Posted by Bonovox
600,000 across all the networks is not that high
Posted by masseur
On 2010-06-20 20:22:15, SE-Naz wrote:
Take it back to them... as its their fault...
haven't got the time so they'll have to deal with it by post now, which was my preferred option but I thought that as I was near an Apple store today I may as well go
anyway, this discussion is moving off topic and is more for the main iPhone 4 discussion so I'll close up now
thanks for the feedback
Posted by masseur
I've unlocked this as there has been an interesting development.
I called Apple today and got put through to their Tier 2 support where it was explained that the backup on the pc/mac contains the unlock policy so I needed to do a restore for the replacement handset to become unlocked. From this I asked that if I restore to any iPhnoe will it unlock and the answer was 'YES'! interestnig huh?
anyway, they're checking a few things but will shortly send me a new replacement handset in advance of me returning the old one so I can be suer its all as expected.
She couldn't, however, explain why the replacement got locked to tmob on activation!
Posted by fatreg
I smell BS Big M!