what is difference between unlocked iPhones?

A year is a long time. In January 2015 all of the US carriers agreed that they would unlock all cell phones unless there was still money owed on the phone or on a subsidized contract, effective in April of 2015. All carriers but Sprint actually implemented the plan immediately. Sprint waited until April, then made it as hard as possible to unlock their phones through bureaucratic red tape. But if you got through their maze and their CSRs who tried to avoid unlocking you could even get a Sprint phone unlocked. Also since that article the US carriers have stopped providing phone subsidies on new contracts. You now must buy the phone for full price, optionally spread over monthly installment payments (at zero interest), and the payments for the phone are shown separately on your bill. Once the phone is paid off your bill drops by that amount. (T-Mobile started this over a year ago; the others finally caught up). Under these terms all phones sold in the US by Apple at full price should be unlocked or be eligible to be unlocked shortly after purchase. If you choose one of the carrier purchase plans (such as AT&T's NEXT) the phone can be locked until it is paid off.

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A phone that is unlocked does not have a SIM for any cellular provider. That means it may be taken to any cellular provider and have a SIM installed for that provider (if they support iPhones.) If you buy a phone at Verizon the phone will have a Verizon SIM installed and is locked to the Verizon cellular system.

Apple no longer sells fully unlocked phones. However, the T-Mobile option, although locked to T-Mobile, has not contract ties. You may ask T-Mobile to unlock the phone if you need to take the phone to another country or carrier. T-Mobile may have some minimum period prior to unlocking. I'm not sure what that is now. It used to be 40 days before they would unlock it.

iPhones since the 6 series support both CDMA and GSM systems.

cheme75 wrote:

What I'd like to know is exactly what is the difference if I buy an unlocked iPhone for full price at the Apple store compared to paying full price at Verizon?

That depends exactly on what Verizon is doing. Generally speaking, if its unlocked, its unlocked, there should be no difference if you buy it from Verizon or directly from Apple. Unlocked means it can work on any GSM carrier.

Verizon and Sprint still use CDMA networks in addition to their LTE networks. all iPhones since the iPhone 4s have come with both GSM and CDMA cellular hardware inside so can use both networks. However, neither Verizon nor Sprint would activate an iPhone not sold specifically for them on their CDMA networks until recently.

As LTE becomes more common, this is now more and more irrelevant, as an LTE sim card will work on any unlocked iPhone regardless of Carrier.

However, should you come into an area not covered by LTE, if Verizon did not activate the iPhone on their CDMA network you will lose phone service entirely, instead of falling back to the CDMA service.

Verizon now appears to be activating iPhone 6 and above on their CDMA networks even if not specifically sold for them however.

If Verizon is selling it unlocked, it should be unlocked, and be no different to the one Apple sells.

Historically, T-Mobile iPhones have always been unlocked when bought directly from Apple for full price. You can choose to activate with T-Mobile, but you do not have to.

Verizon is a special case. ALL Verizon iPhones are unlocked, and have been since the iPhone 5. And earlier this year Verizon did a blanket unlock of all iPhone 4S's. It is part of an agreement with the FCC, where Verizon was allowed to buy additional spectrum, but only if all Verizon phones going forward would be unlocked.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Verizon is a special case. ALL Verizon iPhones are unlocked, and have been since the iPhone 5. And earlier this year Verizon did a blanket unlock of all iPhone 4S's. It is part of an agreement with the FCC, where Verizon was allowed to buy additional spectrum, but only if all Verizon phones going forward would be unlocked.

One think to note (it doesn't apply to the original poster as they appear to be a Verizon customer) is that, though Verizon sells unlocked phones, Verizon corporate stores won't sell phone without activating them. If then phone is purchased at full retail, there's no contract but there would still be a credit check and all that.

A friend is upgrading and selling me his 6 Plus. He bought it from Apple, day of release, paid in full, contract free, for AT&T usage.

The phone should be unlocked already, correct? I only ask because there are some conflicting statements in the discussion forums. I plan to use it on AT&T so the lock might not matter for now. However I'd prefer it unlocked in case I'm abroad and want to insert a local SIM. Thanks.

rockyri wrote:

A friend is upgrading and selling me his 6 Plus. He bought it from Apple, day of release, paid in full, contract free, for AT&T usage.

The phone should be unlocked already, correct? I only ask because there are some conflicting statements in the discussion forums. I plan to use it on AT&T so the lock might not matter for now. However I'd prefer it unlocked in case I'm abroad and want to insert a local SIM. Thanks.

If it is unlocked the receipt should say so. One way to check is to restore iOS on it using iTunes (which you should do anyway). If it is unlocked, when the restore completes you should see the message "Congratulations. Your iPhone is unlocked" in iTunes.

These are user forums. Apple is not here to answer your questions. Go to their website to find all the answers that are available.