I have been watching the pricing of iPhone 3G in China. It has dropped from a high of RMB9,800 to RMB4,288 over a 4 1/2 month period. Scary. Price is right now; plus is fully sync with iTune 8.x with the latest firmware. The unlock is quite simple actually, all you need is a very thin circuit board. Put it between the SIM card and the phone. That's it. Take a look at this little thing here:
Actually, you can do that too. go to www.mooglex.com. For US$39.99 you can do the same.
The guy at the store that did everything for me was so helpful. So customer friendly. He even pull up a chair and let me watch the entire process. It's easier to see this than to follow the instruction online.
The night before I went, I actually did some more research such as "what to watch for", "what firmware is available", etc... Good thing I can read Chinese. I did my entire research from the Chinese iPhone user forums. Yes, Chinese searches and Chinese reading. Here are some terms that I have learned last night:
三码合一： This is a very important term. It means, the serial numbers on the box, on the body of the phone and the internal display serial number must match. There are lots of re-furbish ones out there or "clone". The vendor I bought from found some from its shipment. Scared it.
固件： firmware
破解： "jailbreak" - it's a term in the iphone hacking community. First thing you do when you want to install other stuff or be free of Apple.
This is the company, TGBus, that has franchises across China and have an iPhone "brain" station at each store. Scary. Think about how many smart people there are in China. Rather than exporting toys, maybe someone should start exporting "brains".
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