use of UNLOCKED australian iphone in the usa

If your phone is OFFICIALLY unlocked (i.e. by your carrier) it will work with AT&T in the US.

If it was unofficially unlocked (i.e. software hacked), there's no guaranty if or how long it will work or stay unlocked. In that case, updating the OS will either re-lock it or permanently disable the phone. Apple is at war with the hackers and may find other ways to attack illegally unlocked and jailbroken phones.

You can sync an iPhone with only one computer at a time. If other family members sync their iPhones with your Mac and iTunes account, all media, apps and photos on those phones will be replaced with those in your iTunes library. A solution may be to create logon identities for your family members and transfer their iTunes libraries to your Mac.

While you answered the base question - will an unlocked Australian phone work in the USA - which BTW on personal knowledge is YES.

But you didn't answer the two more subtle questions -

1) >My niece has found a prepaid AT&T sim for 10c a min. and $20.00 100mb data (all refillable)

2) I have been told i need to back up and restore to my itunes before and after restore etc. , and muck around etc. etc.

I will be travelling shortly and will attest to the fact you do NOT want to have DATA turned on while in the USA. The rates are outrageous and there is no way to even monitor the usage.

So I am personally interested in where the US SIM card could be obtained (mentioned in (1)) (Gotta tell you that rate isn't fantastic either. There was something mentioned about a service at www.iphonetrip.com/ (I've not tried it and my Norton comes up and says it's a suspect web site. Rates better but no way to check.)

Also VERY interested in the answer to (2). I too will be taking my own laptop that has the iTunes used to synch the phone. But I didn't do it last time (for fear of not knowing what would happen).

Gotta tell you. For an international coy, Apple sure makes it hard for the interntational traveller to use iPhone! Guess you don't have to worry about it if you ahve an unlimited account at Apple and you travel. But us real world people - what a mine field.

Larry
2010MY10 17:05

1. Don't know. Ask AT&T.

2. Question makes no grammatical or logical sense. You seem to be using the term "restore" incorrectly. It means reinstalling the iPhone OS to the iPhone, not to iTunes. Do you mean sync the phone?

You shouldn't restore the phone unless there is a problem. Frequent syncing backing up is always a good idea and should be done before the trip. Manually backing up after syncing and confirming that everything is functioning is a good idea as well

What does "muck around, etc." really mean, relating to the phone?

While I can't speak for the original poster, my interpretation is -

Are the following steps necessary when swapping SIMS -

a) sync iPhone (which can do an auto backup) so all details on SIM / iPhone are on PC.

b) remove original SIM with "travel" SIM. (Would a "sync" here put all the stuff from the old SIM on the new SIM? "Sync" would have to be set so new SIM info was NOT transferred to PC?)

c) use of "travel" SIM while overseas. This would presumable also mean a change of phone # and the associated confusion with contacts on the iPhone (as opposed to any on the "travel" SIM)

d) When travel is complete - "sync" (with auto backup?)? Seems this means anything on this "travel" SIM would subsequently be lost but in the PC sync / backup. If the sync was not set correctly, there could be loss of data.

e) Replace "travel" SIM with original SIM. Do we do a sync or a restore?

While like a lot of the features of the iPhone, travelling with the Blackberry NEVER had ANY of this problem and CERTAINLY did not have the MASSIVE DATA charges we had with the iPhone.

Confused - yes. Can you help by clarifying this sequence?

Larry
2010MY10 23:10 Sydney, 09:10 US EDT

iPhones do NOT store contact or other data on the SIM. The wild syncing gyrations you suggested when swapping SIMs is not nescessary.

Hi. I moved to the US Last year from Melbourne. I brought My Carrier Unlocked (optus) iphone with me. I got a prepaid Sim from At&T which I am still using. I just use it for calls, not for 3g data btw.

There are many places in the US that have free wifi so you can use the 802.11g rather than 3g to access the internet.

Since your phone is unlocked you can also use t-mobile. T-mobile though doesnt have 3g data that is compatible with the iphone. They use a different frequency than the iphone so you would be limited to slow (dial modem) speeds for internet access.

The problem you will have with AT&T 3g is that in the US an iphone isnt available unlocked so US iphones are locked into the at&t contracts which force you to also pay for a data plan. I was lucky that the place I went (an AT&T stall in the local mall) didnt care about whether I wanted prepay or not and so I managed to get my prepay sims without data.

Fyi. If you bring your phone over with an optus sim you will see that as soon as you step of the plan that your phone will say T-Mobile. If you have a Telstra sim then your phone will say AT&T. If you use your oz sims then expect HUGE charges for phone calls or data.

I Hope that has helped.

FYI In australia iphones CAN store contact details on the sim. You can copy the contact from a phone e.g a nokia n70 and when you put it in the iphone you can copy the contacts to the iphone. (I know because I did this).

When I first started using my iphone in the US there was a baseband update that came through Itunes which removed a few things.

You can get pre-paid SIM from AT&T and add data to it. I've done this, and 100MiB of data lasted me easily two weeks with normal use (that is, don't go downloading all of youtube). The employee of the store did complain when I answered his question as to what kind of phone I had, and said it wouldn't work. Needless to say, it worked perfectly fine.

You need not muck around in iTunes or whatever, just take the SIM, put it in the phone and it will work without issue.