The iPhone is out — in that, you can buy one if you stand in line for three days and then fight the iPhone-guarding troll at the entrance — and everyone wants one.

Here’s the problem with "everyone" though — if, say, you’re a citizen of Hong Kong, desperately wanting - no, needing — the hippest, newest gadget phone around, then you just may be out of luck. Why? Because the US iPhone uses a locked SIM chip — so, you either wait until 2008, pay exorbitant amounts in roaming costs, or find someone to unlock your phone.

Oh, Apple, how we both hate and love thee.

An unlocked iPhone is as easy to get as defeating a unicorn in battle and solving the wizard’s riddle.

Have no delusions, it’s going to be hard to unlock the iPhone. In fact, it’s going to be one of those things that gets unlocked by some fourteen year old kid in Central Asia, who then gets some jail time but is heralded as a hero by the Internet community. In other words, unless you’re fourteen and from Central Asia, you may be out of luck.

Unless, of course, you’ve got some extra pocket change lying around and decide to spend $800 dollars for an already unlocked iPhone that may or may not be fake.

The iPhone website has this to say about unlocking the phone:

Can I “unlock” iPhone and use it with another wireless carrier? - AT&T is the exclusive wireless carrier for iPhone in the United States. If you currently use another wireless carrier, you can choose to transfer your number when you activate your AT&T account.

Can I use the SIM card from my current mobile phone? - You should use the SIM card that came preinstalled in the iPhone.

So, there’s that — and there’s India. According to some sources, you can get an unlocked iPhone in the grey market of India or other Asian countries in the very near future that will work with your existing GSM SIM card. Apparently, users can venture to the grey markets of Palika Bazar or Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi and buy one of these mystical beasts for roughly $650 US dollars.

What are your choices, then? Trying to find an unlocked phone on the Internet — most of which will end up being scams, unlocking the phone yourself (if yourself happens to know what he or she is doing), or you can go on a holy quest to another country’s creepy-sounding market and see if you can’t get it there.

Sounds a bit like trying to find a unicorn, doesn’t it?

If you want our advice, just wait. Wait, or buy any of the dozen phones and PDA’s out there that do just as much — if not more — than the iPhone. Sure, that may not sound as cool as buying one at a grey market — but it’s probably your safest bet.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Gadgets, Mobile Phones, PDA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.