Unlocked German iPhone not working

It does work - for a short period of time.
The phone MUST be resetted, you MUST not sync it (sync overwrites the regional setting to Austria again) and BEFORE you open any app (SMS or Phone) you must set the regional setting to "Germany" -> if you play with that for a while it works, you can recieve, send sms, recieve calls and so on, but if an apps fails only once, it never works again until complete resetting...

Vienna, Mariahilferstrasse

I know this probably isn't any help but this is exactly why I would never unlock my iPhone.

I'm happy with the official carrier and Apples warranty.

I wish you luck in sorting this out.

best wishes

Pete

Ahm we HAVE Apples warranty, as the phones were bought unlocked in germany, where theye are obliged to offer unlocked phones. Just for your information. So this problems have their origin in the not yet finished software in the phones. But thanks for the wishes.

The problem and work around is very well documented in other forums, but requires a hack, which personally I am not comfortable with. I am sure if google a little you will find a considerable amount of information on it, but remember you will void your warranty. Apple have not officially released iPhones into other countries, and therefore will not support requests until they do.. Also the carriers only support the country of sale...

No No No No No....

US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and China are all supported with version 1.1.2. Any country other that these are not supported at the moment. If the phone was officially available in other countries, then there would be no problem (I know you are going to say, Italy, Japan, Canada and China no offical phone yet. But these have large populations and business people travel to these)

The sim card of the country maps the mobile country code to the ISO country code. Something in 1.1.2 needs to know information about the area codes and other items, all of which vary from country to country. If the something is asked to decipher a phone number and fails to locate any information about the phone number structure used in your country, it will crash. As the iPhone only has been officially released America, UK, Germany and France, this information has been written into the necessary something on the system. Later releases 1.1.3 etc... will add more and more countries.

If you want to get your iphone to operate in an unsupported country, you need to hack it and do some editing. I do not advise this as it will void your warranty. I know you say its an unlocked iPhone, but that unlocked iPhone was intended for one of the countries specified, I assume Germany. The something needs to be altered by hacking, and this is what will void the warranty, because you will be changing the something to a non supported structure! I hope this does help, and it is very well documented else where on the net.

Message was edited by: Keith Vaugh

If Apple really intended to forbid the use of SIM cards from countries other than the US and the European and Asian "Targets", they would certainly not have "programmed" the thing to react to an "illegal" SIM card by crashing. They would have put in some message on screen. I do believe the crashing is not intentional

Apple and T-Mobile/Orange FR sell phones that are supposed to be unlocked to work with any SIM Card, with no restriction or warning. I'm not a specialist in this area but I believe that with free movement of people and goods within the EU, they will have to allow people from abroad to buy the phone. But even if this is not the case: Apple needs to make the phone usable for those people from countries where the phone is officially on the market who travel a lot and buy it unlocked to be able to use local SIM Cards abroad.

I forgot to say that I can reliably place a call from the contacts list: The on-screen display crashes most of the time when I do that but the call goes through and I can talk to the person with no problem at all. I only have to ask them to hang up, since I don't have any access to that function on my screen (the only way out seems to be to turn of the iPhone). It is really not a matter of the phone not working with the network as such.

I looks like the problem lies with the fact that there is some country specific formatting info missing from the phone (info that the phone uses to display phone numbers nicely, with spaces and brackets and all that). The phone identifies the country, tries to find the right formatting, doesn't find anything and quits service.

When receiving a call, my phone almost always crashes. Again, the cause seems to be that the iPhone is trying to access the same country specific formatting info, both to display the number nicely and to check whether it is a known caller from the contacts list. This is confirmed by an observation I have made that the phone doesn't crash if the call originates from an analog number with no caller ID info. For such a call, it just displays an info saying the the caller's number is not revealed.

All this makes me think that Apple really needs to do is to provide a default template which the phone can call whenever it finds out that the SIM is from an usupported country/provider. As far as I'm concerned, it is OK if they make it "nice" only for supported countries and "just work" for other countries.

Hello!
I have bought an unlocked iphone in Passau and then tried to use it with a T-mobile Austria sim card and nothing works. I mean, I can use it as an ipod or as an internet browser or something but I deffiniatelly cannot use it as a phone!! I'm very nervous and feel completely left alone from all sides. Who is now responsible for this mess? You want to go legal and you buy something which turns out to be a complete fraud!!! I really don't know what to do. Have called Apple, T-mobile Austria, they have provided me with a new sim card,nothing, tried to change country settings to DE...nothing... numb 🙂

Well I fully agree with you what the description of the problem is!
The phone works and it just dont finds the international settings.
It works a short period of time when set up completely new and then forced to german settings.

It WILL be solved as Austria (in my place for example) will become an iPhone next year too.
BUT: I dont want to wait until then and I travel a lot so I need an unlocked phone.
The thing with the WARRANTY: It carries the EC Logo. Which clearly qualifies the telephone to work with all european norms and countries.
Making phone calls is a basic application, and reading a last generation SIM-Card is a norm -> therefore if someone is to sell a phone in the EU he MUST be able to handle all the EU countries, OR CLEARLY communicate the fact of non-operation. (Could you imagine a California-only iPhone, cause the local settings for Oregon are missing? (ok bad example, cause YES ;)) - but you unserstand what I want to say.)
I am not going to hack although the problem would be fixed in 5 Minutes (for example reaplace/create Austrian settings with simply copying german settings into the plist or something) cause I want to get it fixed, as they must.

Completly agree and I have the same problems!

Compeletly agree on the possible solution too - just insert a stupid erorr dialog, or ignore the fact of "badly" formatted numbers! - SMS should work and should not crash cause it is not "pretty" I mean it STILL is a phone which should provide the basic funcionality!

- BTW

Have you bug reported allready? https://bugreport.apple.com/

I see that you now have the general picture, but you are still missing one key point:

If you use a sim card from the country of purchase, France or Germany where the iPhone is unlocked it works perfectly. You can move between member states with your iPhone, but incur larger bills as you are roaming!

The EC mark can have different 5 meanings (ranked highest to lowest)
1- Manufactured in Europe
2- Meets legal requirements
3 - Meets technical standards
4 - Is a high quality product
5 - Is not Dangerous

Also as the iphone is marketed and sold in a supported country it does comply with EC requirements. There maybe an argument here it should work in the 27 member states of the EU.

This comes from another Forum so I am not sure if it is accurate (however I did look at A28 and it seems to be):

Under Article 28, goods are sold freely within the member states, this is fact. But under the Cassis de Dijon' case law there is this reference

Mutual recognition means that a Member State cannot, in principle, prohibit the sale on its territory of goods which are lawfully produced and marketed in another Member State, even if those goods differ from those goods are produced to technical or qualitative descriptions that differ from those required of its own goods

Apple has not marketed the iphone in any other country other than Germany, UK, and France. As it is not marketed in these other states, there is no obligation for it to function with a Sim card from one of them. Remember it will function with a sim card from one of the supported states and can roam thereby complies with the EC Logo! Also remember the the iPhone does work, but you are putting an unsupported sim card into the device. The obligation is not on Apple as it had not intended to sell the iphone to other states yet!

Do you agree with this interoperation!

google five forty and see if you find some additional information.

Hey there!

Just read the post concerning imei and serial number: somehing I have forgotten to tell you...

I bought mine at Saturn in Vienna and I have the same problems like you all.
Of course I talked to apple, saturn, A1... they didn't provide a solution so far.

But something interesting happend at apple hotline: I told them my serial number and they said, that this device is already registered to another user. So this Iphone Serial is already in use.
I didn't ask about the imei...

Isn't this strange? I hope there is a solution for all this soon.

Well I do understand your point. The only thing is, that if you start selling something in Germany you should count with the possiblity of usage in other states. And the French phones for example are ment for free selling from the beginning, and they have the same problem. So we are very in the middle of nothing.

But anyway, I am confident that the problem will be fixed soon, hopefully with 1.1.3 or I also might jailbreak. They surely will add new countries at least cause they are planning to introduce the phones whereelse too.

the same happened to me, Somebody at the apple hotline also told me, that there seems o be a problem with Serial- and IMEI number assigned to different people. He DID ask me for my IMEI number.

As the activation of my iphone took just 1 minute and not 24hours it might be, that all the saturn iPhones are registered to saturn?

Best regards

Message was edited by: Christian Boehm