Apple selling unlocked iPhones in Canada (opens in new tab)

I saved a couple of hundred dollars by buying an unlocked iPhone and not going on a Vodafone contract (in NZ).

It was something like $2500 total over 24 months, vs. $1700 when buying it outright and going on a cheaper contract.

You'd think more people could do basic math and think past the "first hit is $99" bait-and-switch...

Also: Vodafone in NZ does not do free upgrades for contract users, begging the question of the point of a contract.

Flexibility and cheap calls from abroad.

I don’t know much about the price structure in the US but in Germany there are cheaper options if you buy just the SIM. That phone must be payed somehow, that’s why you pay more every month when you have a subsidized phone.

Now, that in itself wouldn’t be so bad, but your choices are seriously limited with a iPhone. What if I don’t need hundreds of minutes but want a real data flat rate? That’s not possible with an iPhone.

And you can’t just pop in some cheapo prepaid SIM when traveling, you are forced to shoulder the roaming costs. That’s maybe not so important in the US but seriously sucks in Europe.

Since the costs are the same – either higher monthly costs and a subsidized phone or lower monthly costs and a unsubsidized phone – I would always rather buy the unsubsidized phone.

> Is this a particularly revolutionary thing?

No. They've been doing this for a while. Not sure why it's news now.

For me personally, it's worked out a lot cheaper. I got an unlocked iPhone 3G for ~€510 (inc VAT) and have been using it with a prepaid data SIM. Total cost of data over a year has been about €20-25. I happen to use another phone for voice, and I pay ~€2/month on average for that.

Extrapolated over 2 years: ~€610. (+ €60 for the second phone if you must include it)

The best iPhone tariff at the time was €35/month for 2 years - €840.

Added bonuses:

- I don't have to pay exorbitant data roaming charges when abroad, as I can just swap in a local SIM and have done so in South Africa, UK and Spain. (this is the reason I use a separate SIM+phone for voice)

- iPhone is exclusive to Orange & T-Mobile in Austria, the 2 worst networks for 3G. (this isn't much of an issue as "worst" here is still pretty good compared to most countries)

- ability to resell or otherwise pass it on (obviously)

- I can freely move country (it happens)

- I can tariff-hop

More so than things like this, which is 6 months old? http://www.billshrink.com/blog/6847/nexus-one-vs-iphone-droi...

This isn't strictly a comparison of the same phone with a contract and without, since it's compared to the nexus one without a contract, but a more detailed search will turn up some (some have been posted here on hacker news).

Other than what's outlined in that comparison, what other benefits are you thinking of? It mainly comes down to price, and often the total cost to the consumer over the length of the contract is more when the phone is subsidized vs when there is no contract. There's a perception that the the subsidized price is cheaper (just like how government subsidized student loans are cheaper because the government initially "pays" the interest), but I think often the phone is just being paid for in installments in each monthly bill during the contract.

This is just wild massing guessing on my part, but without vendor/hardware lock-in, wouldn't competition (and therefore service) be much better? As of now, there's several prohibitive costs to switching services due to having contract cancellation fees, requiring a new phone, not necessarily being able to transfer your data, etc. With an unlocked phone, you'd still have those contract cancellation fees, but it would be a much smoother process to switch. If it was easy enough to change to another carrier, carriers would most likely focus more on being more attractive than their competitors to try to entice customers to them. As it stands, it seems to me like few people would actually bother switching unless they were grossly unhappy with their service.

However, I'll freely admit that I don't necessarily have data or experience to back this up. Am I on the right track here, or babbling aimlessly?

With an unlocked phone you can resell it.

I bought an unlocked iPhone 3GS in January and paid a premium, but I will probably sell it this summer, if I can get an unlocked iPhone 4G.

AT&T's "commitment free" price for the 16GB 3GS is $549, with a $599 price for the 16GB iPhone 4.

Although I'm guessing there's still some carrier subsidy hidden in that price since commitment free != unlocked, and even if that phone is sold on eBay it's guaranteed to only generate revenue for AT&T and nobody else.

Not sure the cost, but iirc, it was $880 after taxes for my wife's 3GS about 9 months ago. Actually, not sure how long ago, but it was a while back.

Despite how it sounds, this isn't anything new. They've been doing this for some time.

Edit: I should point out, I believe we also got the iPhone care thingy from Apple as well. Which makes more sense.

The state of wireless in Canada is depressing, although slowly improving. The instant that Wind goes live in Victoria, I'm switching!

Things are actually starting to get better. There was some spectrum auctioned last year and recently a number of start-up carriers are starting to pop up. The government also lifted some foreign ownership limits on the carriers. Give it a few years for people's contracts to end and we should have a healthy telecom market.