A little unlocked Iphone advice please

February 22, 2010 12:29 AM

I am in Hong Kong at the moment and considering getting a new Iphone that will be unlocked. My plan is to bring it back to the states and use it with my provider T-mobile. Can anyone tell me if I will encounter any problems or if this is easy as pie. I am hoping I just need to put in my sim card and go. Hive? What say you?
posted by citybuddha to technology (3 answers total)

Officially unlocked iPhone from Hong Kong will work without issue on T-Mobile. You may need to do some tweaking to get the internet working, but that might take you ten minutes. Phone service, however, will be as easy as putting in the SIM.
posted by smersh at 12:53 AM on February 22, 2010

Voice and text should work as soon as you put in the SIM. For data (EDGE only, as the iPhone doesn't have T-Mobile's 3G band) and MMS you'll have to configure some settings yourself; the T-mobile forums has the details in this post.
posted by robt at 12:54 AM on February 22, 2010

You'll run into problems if the iPhone has a hardware problem and needs to be repaired/replaced. An iPhone's warranty is valid only in the country it was purchased in (apparently to do with FCC/telecommunications regulations). Yours would only be able to be repaired if it went back to Hong Kong.
posted by VirtualWolf at 3:23 AM on February 22, 2010