iPhone now software unlocked in 32 countries and 69 carriers

With the European and Asian iPhone rollouts still months away, is it any wonder to find the little guy venturing out on the mean, GSM streets all on his own? According to that list above compiled by the iPhone Dev Team, the freebie iPhone software unlock has now been tested to work in 32 countries and 69 national carriers -- a list which is changing by the minute. Testing is based on calls in/out, SMS in/out, EDGE/GPRS access, and voicemail access. Not Visual Voicemail, naturally, but the ability to receive notifications alerts and check voicemail messages. As usual, we won't link you directly to the iPhoneDev community in accordance to their request for uh, anonymity.

Update: Make that 42 countries and 90 local carriers according to our readers! They've unlocked their own phones on the additional country/carrier combos: New Zealand/Vodafone, Spain/Movistar, Poland/Orange, Czech Republic/Vodafone, Bahrain/Batelcom/MTC Vodafone, Israel/Cellcom, Hungary/T-Mobile, Belgium/Proximus/Base/Mobistar, Kuwait/Wataniya, and Ireland/Meteor. Note: the iPhoneDev list included Telus (with a note that it won't work) and double-counted India. Any more dear readers?

[mark @ Sep 13th 2007 2:28AM]

Also: SINGPORE: M1 (full services)!! :)

[Santz24 @ Sep 13th 2007 6:44AM]

No-one has tried it in Spain yet? Im surprised...i hope it doesn't mean it doesn't work over here!

[coca @ Sep 13th 2007 3:48AM]

Works perfectly in Spain! Movistar carrer!

[DakStaka @ Sep 13th 2007 6:11AM]

It's GSM phone so you may as well add every GSM nextwork to the list... (Depending on frequnecy bands available in region/iPhone matching)

[rav0 @ Sep 13th 2007 6:30AM]

"you may as well add every GSM nextwork to the list"
Really, you should be able to, but since it's only a trial and error based unlock method, it can't be known for sure as the proper unlocking method had not been released by Apple.

Real example: An unlocked Motorola phone will be locked again if a locked firmware is loaded onto it, but before this, it is possible to reset the unlock code to 00000000 so that the handset is easily unlocked again no matter what locked firmware is applied. There is at lease one exception though, loading Three Australia firmware onto the phone will lock the phone and the phone will not accept the unlock code 00000000 even though any other carrier's software would.

[Mike @ Sep 13th 2007 1:55AM]

5.3 Telus

wtf?
Telus uses CDMA.

[Thomas Ricker @ Sep 13th 2007 1:59AM]

@Mike,

"Telus: I did test the unlocked iPhone with Telus Mike (SIM based CDMA) for kicks, as expected, it did not work at all."

Agree, stupid to include in the list.

Thomas

[Jeremy Banks @ Sep 13th 2007 7:32AM]

I'm stuck in a contract with them, and figured as much, but then I saw this list and got my hopes up. :(

[engadget @ Sep 23rd 2007 4:47PM]

"Telus: I did test the unlocked iPhone with Telus Mike (SIM based CDMA) for kicks, as expected, it did not work at all."

And Mike isn't SIM based CDMA anyway - it's iDEN.

[Z Z @ Sep 13th 2007 1:55AM]

Actually, only 31 countries. India appears twice on the list: at #13 and #31.

[Michael @ Sep 13th 2007 1:55AM]

How does it work on Telus in Canada? Telus is CDMA...

[Justin @ Sep 13th 2007 1:56AM]

I am curious as well.

[dj-kenpo @ Sep 13th 2007 1:59AM]

ya.. I was just wondering. telus canada is NOT GSM.

fido and rogers are, though they both eat babies.

[Iain @ Sep 13th 2007 12:04PM]

Telus's Mike service uses SIMs but it is still on the CDMA network. Someone tested one of those SIMs in the iPhone but as you have probably guessed by now it did not work, given that the network is still CDMA.

[Mohammed Mudassir Azeemi @ Sep 13th 2007 1:58AM]

Your comments: My cousin is buying the iPhone , he will be using it in Karachi,
Pakistan on Warid Telecom and also on Mobilink Mobile
Network!

Yeaaahhhh!

Mudassir
San Francisco, CA

[Graham @ Sep 13th 2007 2:00AM]

Telus? It's CDMA. Anyone want to explain how the SIM unlock on a GSM phone makes that work?

[Mike @ Sep 13th 2007 9:06AM]

your like the 90th person to tell us that, was there a reason you felt the need to re-comment that?

[Graham @ Sep 13th 2007 1:07PM]

Notice there was a five god damn minute lag between the first post and this? There were ZERO comments when I submitter, jerk.

[David @ Sep 13th 2007 2:00AM]

Wait, when I buy an iPhone, do I also have to buy the plan from ATT?

[TeddyN @ Sep 13th 2007 3:13AM]

I don't think so... You can go to the apple website and add it to your cart and I'm pretty sure you can order it and not need to subscribe to AT&T right away. I think you need to activate it with AT&T, but that can be gotten around.

[ssuk @ Sep 13th 2007 4:08AM]

Either buy a second hand one, or buy from a Apple Store. There are applications on the net to fake the AT&T Activation and you'll never have to touch AT&T (or more importantly, give them money).

[Solomon Ford @ Sep 13th 2007 12:53PM]

All activation is done using iTunes in the comfort of your own home. You can buy the phone online, or walk into any Apple store and buy it in person (which is what I did). I am not sure about AT&T stores; the activation should be the same, but I've read one person who said they hassled him about it. Dunno if that's true, or what the hassle was. (Maybe the AT&T people were more pushy about cases and other add-ons, which seems likely.)

[Disconnect @ Sep 13th 2007 1:02PM]

Buy it from AT&T as a "gift" .. they'll still have to do a credit check but they won't do an activation or anything.

[cj @ Sep 13th 2007 2:00AM]

add another one, dobson communications (cellular one) out of ohio!

[fkananeh @ Sep 13th 2007 2:08AM]

Dobson offers GSM in OHIO

[Victoid @ Sep 13th 2007 2:01AM]

please, more articles on the iphone unlock. i feel this issue hasn't received nearly the attention it deserves.

[Brian B. @ Sep 13th 2007 2:06AM]

You can add Ireland to the list, the carrier is meteor www.meteor.ie. My meteor sim works fine.

[Kyle Simmons @ Sep 13th 2007 2:10AM]

why don't we take a poll of how many engadget users actually have an iphone, and limit iphone news to that percentage? I am an engadget fanboy, but this is starting to get ridiculous.

[Taylor @ Sep 13th 2007 4:52AM]

There are people who don't have the iPhone that are interested in it.

Yahoo Pipes iPhone-less RSS feed, peeps. Use it!

[paakofi @ Sep 13th 2007 5:51AM]

I think you're wrong.. it's not "starting to get ridiculous"... we passed that a few months ago... but hey, Engadget are doing it for their readers and it seems there are a lot of iphone fans on here.

Far outnumbering the general gadget fans.

Guys if anyone is ever planning on getting a job at Engadget, i think you know what kind of writers they like... people with a natural bias towards anything remotely apple. That way they wont have to put out a directive for them to keep posting apple stuff.

I dont know how long this is going on but obviously engadget have worked out that it's worth the risk of losing a bit of general gadget lovers in favor of bringing in more iphone, ipod, i-anything lovers.

We'll know whether it works in a year depending on whether it turns into just another gadget blog, dies off or becomes ever more popular... i personally havent reached the end of my tether yet, but i'm getting there.

I've made possibly just over a dozen comments on this website since i've been on here. half of those are probably on giveaway/contest entries... most of the rest have been to complain about this annoying tendency to treat engadget like an apple forum with post about post of relatively insignificant items about apple products.

Think about this Ryan an all, with so many people saying you are biased towards some companies... there must be some truth to it. "No smoke without fire".

[Midoe @ Sep 13th 2007 2:10AM]

Add this carrier : "Wataniya" in Kuwait. Works fine!

[jj @ Sep 13th 2007 2:30AM]

Guysssssss.
Get on the Ball !!!

Telus is not a GSM Carrier...
Tsk tsk, tsk.

[kunaal @ Sep 13th 2007 2:22AM]

i was just about to add that midoe..sick to see another person in kuwait with an iphone

[Metime @ Sep 13th 2007 2:27AM]

This is great - I'll be over from NZ soon to pick one of these up and use over here. But, let me make a plea for an app in the near future.

A lot of cellphones have the ability to save a 'profile' for each of your GPRS access providers. Let's say you have several SIMS - e.g. in Europe - you travel a lot and don't want to rack up roaming charges so so switch to the local country SIM card you have in your wallet.

So, other cellphones have the ability to save you APN, user, password for each provider under different profiles. SO, when you switch SIM card, you just switch profile to match the SIM, and you cellphone knows which settings to use.

Does the iPhone have this built in? I'm guesing not as it was built by Apple as a device specifically tied to onely one provider, rather than most other cellphones which are build 'vanilla' or with generic settings and then locked (sometimes) by the provider to their own network.

So, as well as breaking the network lock (which is great and I am grateful), I wonder if some bright team could develop a way of storing different GPRS profiles saving you from entering them afresh each time?

[mark wilcox @ Sep 13th 2007 2:34AM]

It has also been unlocked on Vodafone in New Zealand.

[Metime @ Sep 13th 2007 2:37AM]

Great - excellent news for me! wouldn't happen to know the link where that was posted do you - I'd like to send them a message.

[bloody toast=\ @ Sep 13th 2007 2:43AM]

does this thing even have 3G? why the hell would you want to use it in half of those countries?
sorry, but N95 > iphone period.

[alex @ Sep 13th 2007 2:48AM]

Now there's no excuse not to have an iPhone in a gadget give away.

[Jos @ Sep 13th 2007 5:21AM]

New Zealand - Vodafone confirmed working

Text: yes
Call: yes
Voicemail: yes
GPRS - havent tried / not sure.

[Metime @ Sep 13th 2007 2:58AM]

nice!

[Chete @ Sep 13th 2007 2:52AM]

You guys made me think for a second that I missed the news that the iPhone had a CDMA version out...

cauz I don't see TELUS switching to GSM anytime soon...

[Yvo @ Sep 13th 2007 2:56AM]

I was in Vancouver, B.C. roaming on Rogers and my Visual Voicemail worked fine. Cost me $3 to listen to my voicemail (was very important so worth it).

Yvo

[Bill @ Sep 13th 2007 2:59AM]

I've never heard of this - "I-Fone?" what does it do? Who keeps locking it? So very confusing. . .

[coca @ Sep 13th 2007 3:05AM]

Answering from Spain! Yesterday i was all day long trying to free my iphone, until past midnight when it was donde!! It works perfectly with Movistar, don't know with other carriers...
Great thanks to everyone who made it possible!!

[geerth @ Sep 13th 2007 3:12AM]

You can add Belgium to the list with 3 Providers: Proximus, Base and Mobistar.

[BC @ Sep 13th 2007 3:15AM]

Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a VERY bumpy ride. Pissing off Steve, with his pet no less, has no limits to resources spent regaining his ego. Only a fool thinks this silly drama is over. Apple has long history of vindictive pyschotic warfare weapon preference.

[ZeroXX @ Sep 13th 2007 3:47AM]

Guys, add Hungary, T-Mobile carrier too. Fully working :)

[Dave @ Sep 13th 2007 3:29AM]

I don't think Apple is all that worried about this. This only means that they'll sell even more iPhone's. It's AT&T you have to worry about here ;).

Us people over at Korea/Japan will have to wait until Steve finally get's his precious over here.. Bummer.

[Rasesh @ Sep 13th 2007 3:29AM]

The provider i use (India), isn't mentioned... but it works on that... so this list definitely needs some updating to do.

(Provider - BPL Mobile)

[vormkrijger @ Sep 13th 2007 3:31AM]

Belgium ? brussels the capital of europe ? base,orange,mobistar,proximus ?????