If you’re thinking of buying an iPhone, choosing the right network now could mean 'unlocking' potential savings on your mobile phone bill sooner rather than later. We take a look at the different options currently available.
What does 'unlocking' mean?
With the iPhone no longer exclusive to a single network, you are now able to legitimately unlock your iPhone. Unlocking your iPhone means being able to switch your tariff to the provider of your choice and hopefully save yourself some money in the process. However, when or even if you are able to unlock your phone varies from network to network.
O2
If you are a pay monthly customer with O2 then you are free to unlock your phone at anytime, but you will still be required to honour the length of your original contract before switching providers.
For Pay As You Go customers, there is a £15 charge for unlocking your phone and, if you choose to unlock it less than 12 months after you bought it, you will lose your free Web & Wi-Fi bolt on.
The actual process for unlocking your phone is relatively straight forward. All you have to do is complete the unlock form online and wait for up to 14 days for a confirmation text. Then connect your iPhone to iTunes via a USB port to receive confirmation that your phone has been successfully unlocked.
Tesco
Tesco can sometimes be relied on to have some tempting offers for buying an iPhone outright. However, Pay As You Go customers will still only be able to unlock their handsets 12 months after purchase, while Pay monthly customers will also have to wait until the end of their contract period.
To unlock your iPhone you will need an unlatching code to be issued by Tesco’s customer care team. If you are a Pay As You Go customer, and the phone has been active for more than 90 days, you won’t be charged as long as it has been topped up by £25 since activation.
Orange
With Orange you are able to unlock your iPhone after 3 months, but you will be charged £19.57 for doing so. If you are a Pay As You Go customer then you will need at least that amount of credit on your account in order to unlock your iPhone.
You can unlock your phone by calling Orange’s customer service department and it will take on average between 7 and 10 days for your request to be processed.
Vodafone
At the time of writing, Vodafone don’t currently offer an unlocking service which means that you will be locked in for the entire period of your contract.
Other Options
There are, of course, other ways to unlock your iPhone: everything from buying an expensive unlocked import from the so-called ‘grey’ market to using ‘jailbreak’ software downloaded from the internet.
Legal issues aside, by resorting to unlocking your iPhone through ‘hacking’ you are running the risk of rendering it unresponsive and it will also affect your warranty should you ever have to return it to the manufacturer.
Buying an expensive imported iPhone also makes little sense these days. When you consider that you can have an officially unlocked phone for half the price in as little as three months after you’ve purchased it – exercising a bit of patience could save you a substantial amount of money.
