salavatkh wrote:
"No one but you is responsible for your current predicament, having purchased a dubious phone from a dubious source it is now yours."
I think OP said he has bought iPhone from Target. If that is a dubious source, then only Apple Store is a legitimate one. Apple should stop selling from dubious source to maintain quality of customer service.
"Locking/unlocking is not an Apple decision. "
I cannot agree with this statement. It is Apple who enables or disables locking of the phone through centralized database (like stolen ones cannot be activated at all). Carrier only decides whether to sell locked or unlocked phones and orders appropriate ones from Apple.
I think you brought important point though in your post - "Many pay full price for a locked iPhone, it is simply not bound to a contract or the buyer is not eligible for a subsidy from the carrier." - it appears that iPhone is CONTRACT FREE, but not SIM FREE, which means it is still LOCKED to a first used carrier.
Well again - this conclusion is not valid either - how to predict which carrier customer is going to use then? Logically, it sounds like it is contract free, but lockable iPhone, locking to the first carrier. But again - why so much mess with different locking options while selling iPhone at full price (I mean full - you can buy truly unlocked iPhone for very much the same amount around the globe)?
I think it is a mess. And probably Apple who should clean it a bit for the sake of customer satisfaction, as it always thought to serve.
Target is a legitimate reseller, however, they do not sell unlocked phones. Paying full price for a phone in the US does not guarantee that it is unlocked, it just means that it is not subsidized. Many of the US carriers still have locked phones, despite the person paying full price. Phones in the US also do not lock to the first carrier used. Phones are locked, despite the SIM used. They are locked to a specific carrier, and if you try to activate it with another carrier, the first, second or thirtieth time, it will still give you the same error your friend has received, unsupported SIM. The fact that the device was contract free means just that, it is contract free, but it is locked to a carrier. I can go anywhere tomorrow and purchase an AT&T phone, contract free, pay full price for the phone, but that does not make it unlocked. It is still locked to AT&T. That is what you really need to understand. If I took that phone and put a T-Mobile SIM in it, it would not work, and I would get an unsupported SIM error, because the device is locked to AT&T. That is what needs to be understood. To purchase an unlocked phone in the US, for the most part needs to be done at the Apple Store.
While Apple holds the database for locked phones, when they sell stock to carriers and resellers, they are all indicated as to what they are. Carrier get phones locked to their network. Resellers, in the US, like Target, Best Buy, Walmart, get devices locked to the carriers they are authorized to sell for. The biggest issue here is the fact that someone purchased a phone they were unaware of what the rules are here in the US, then took it to another country to use. The device is regional for North America, is locked to a carrier, and the warranty is only valid in the US. While it may be difficult to purchase a device in your home country, and it may be expensive, when you purchase a device from another country, you are accepting the risk of not all things working like they would with a phone sold for your particular location. The other thing is understanding the terminology used when describing devices in the US differs from how people describe them in other countries, as well as the fact that in many countries all phones are unlocked. That is not the case in the US.