international warranty for iPhone 5?

Very simply - your phone will only be serviced in the country where it was purchased. Except that a phone purchased in any EU country can be serviced in any other EU country.

There is apparently a new service being offered, but only for people who purchase AppleCare+ at the time of purchase. Under this policy a phone will be serviced in any country where AppleCare+ is available. I haven't seen the details yet.

That's rumor only at this time, Lawrence, based on a purported leaked Apple internal policy document. Apple has not yet actually rolled out such a policy, to my knowledge, and may never do so. The official terms of service for AppleCare+ still state the policy in restriction to the country of purchase.

Regards.

Thanks. I was repeating a post from wjosten a couple of days ago, so I assumed it was true as it was from a reliable source 😉

Followup: I read the AppleCare+ agreement for the US and UK (both at http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/applecare/applecareplus/). They are quite different. The US definitely states that service may be limited to the country of purchase. However, the UK agreement does not mention that anywhere. And, in fact, AppleCare+ in Europe is not offered directly by Apple; it is an insurance policy issued by AIG.

I also reviewed the Hong Kong agreement; it does not have a restriction either.

My Mandarin and Japanese are not good enough to read those agreements.

But it appears that the rules are different in different countries.

Message was edited by: Lawrence Finch

Reply to bump my major edits of the previous post.

I have spoken to apple U.S sales representative and came to know that for any hardware defects product needs to be ship back to place where it was purchased but you can claim software warranty in any country where there is a apple authorised store but we need to confirm with our local apple service centre whether they accepted iphone for software defects which are purchased in other country.

Any views on this.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Followup: I read the AppleCare+ agreement for the US and UK (both at http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/applecare/applecareplus/). They are quite different. The US definitely states that service may be limited to the country of purchase. However, the UK agreement does not mention that anywhere. And, in fact, AppleCare+ in Europe is not offered directly by Apple; it is an insurance policy issued by AIG.

I also reviewed the Hong Kong agreement; it does not have a restriction either.

My Mandarin and Japanese are not good enough to read those agreements.

But it appears that the rules are different in different countries.

Message was edited by: Lawrence Finch

Yes, the European AppleCare+ coverage is very different. Hardware service, though, still seems to be restricted; here's the statement from the UK warranty:

IMPORTANT RESTRICTION FOR iPHONE AND iPAD SERVICE. Apple may restrict service for iPad and iPhone to the EEA and Switzerland. Only Apple or an AASP should perform service on iPhone or iPad products.

How AppleCare+ might change this is unclear. Apparently one can file a claim from outside of the purchasing country, but obtaining service is a different matter. That still seems to be available only on the country of purchase, or for EU countries anywhere in the EEU area.

Regards.

You can take an iPhone to any Apple store in the world for help in using it. This is a free service. There is no software warranty to claim, so that is an irrelevant discussion. If Apple acknowledges a software problem they release a fix to the whole world; all iPhones have essentially the same software.