Originally Posted by Sananda Maitreya:
“when comparing prices don't forget that the american prices do not include the sales tax whereas our prices include VAT.
you will need to jailbreak and unlock the phone which will void your warranty. ziphone seems to be the most popular method. you'll then need to enter the 02 settings for browsing. i don't know if ziphone allows you to do this. if not you will need to either put some code on the phone to allow editing APN settings onscreen or put in an 02 preferences list.”
Just to clear up this fallacy, Jailbreaking and unlocking your iphone does NOT void the warranty, this myth comes from the very first few weeks of the iphone, when it was hacked using hardware or unreversable software unlocks.
Sure if you hardware unlock and take a soldering iron to it, you void the warranty. However, u can now get SIMM unlocks for the iphone, u pop ur sim card in a holder and insert that into the iphone, viola unlocked, u want it back to normal, take it out.
Also ZiPhone has a very handy "restore" button which puts the phone back to factory settings and removes all traces of the unlock, u can also acheive this by restoring or updating the firmware, the unlocks will vanish and Apple will be non-the wiser.
just thought I'd clear it up as I read it a lot, and its simply not true anymore.
Plus you no longer need to enter any settings for browsing generally with the newer firmwares after 1.1.1, I unlocked mine and it worked fine with Edge on Orange without entering any settings. I'm back to my O2 sim now, but it does work fine.
ZiPhone is literally as simple as point and click, plug ur iphone into your mac/pc with the usb cable, open ziphone, there are 3 tick boxes "Unlock & Activate Phone" "Jailbreak Phone" (putts the application installer on so u can install thousands of free 3rd party apps), and "Do Both". You click the tick boxes, then click "Go" and it does it for u in two minutes, so easy!
For those considering buying from the States, it can save you money, but remember to get it send as a "gift" as you will have to pay customs on it, plus you may get unlucky as they do random checks, if they find it, they'll slap VAT & Import tax on it.
I see you're going over yourself, in which case yeah, buy one there and just pop it in ur pocket when u come home, it'll look like its just ur normal phone, unlock it when you get back!