unlocked iphones and how do they work?

Im confused, I have a current plan on US cellular and att doesnt cover our area, but i want an iphone. I see that is possible to unlock the iphone and us your current company. My question, if i purchased an unlocked iphone, what would i need to program it to run with my provider? would i need some kind of card or number? i know ill have to maybe use some kind of program or something


really confused, thanks a ton for any help

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Originally Posted by Duke_fann

Im confused, I have a current plan on US cellular and att doesnt cover our area, but i want an iphone. I see that is possible to unlock the iphone and us your current company. My question, if i purchased an unlocked iphone, what would i need to program it to run with my provider? would i need some kind of card or number? i know ill have to maybe use some kind of program or something


really confused, thanks a ton for any help

The I hone is a GSM phone, your cell carrier uses CDMA. The Iphone will not work on US Cellular. The technology used to send and receive calls is different.
The easiest way to tell is that GSM uses sim cards, CDMA does not.
GSM phones sold by carriers are programmed to only accept sims from that carrier, ergo locked to it. The phones can be unlocked and used on other GSM carriers. CDMA phones are programmed to be used only on the carriers network. Also note that the Sim cards have all the info needed to connect to the carrier, while the CDMA phones have that info programmed in them. Typically CDMA carriers do not allow unlocked phones on their networks, also.

Unlocking an iPhone is extremely simple and takes about 10minutes to so. What Apple and AT&T are doing is trying to corner the market with their phone so that only AT&T can use it.
You can find out how to unlock iPhone's at:

directzilla.com

and

iphone.unlock.no/

Originally Posted by directzilla

Unlocking an iPhone is extremely simple and takes about 10minutes to so. What Apple and AT&T are doing is trying to corner the market with their phone so that only AT&T can use it.
/

First of all, the restriction is more on Apple's side, the Iphone is the only phone that that ATT has with the restriction. Secondly, unlocking it will not do the op any good, it will not work on his carrier.

I heard that even if you get a unlocked i phone you can never update it because once you do apple will disable it if its not on att network.

Is this true?