What happens when the iPhone contract expires?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Was just wondering what happens to your iPhone and such like when you reach the end of the 18month contract?

Traditionally if you wish you can either stay and be happy with your contract, or take your phone and service elsewhere if you get a better offer, or dont like the CS, can't get signal, fancy a change etc etc. With the whole vendor lock in (which I think is a bad idea), essentially for the life of your iPhone usage you will have to use o2 as your provider!

Maybe I'm stating the obvious but that really limits choices! Because of this, I dont think it's wise to buy the iPhone on o2 - even though I like o2 and the phone itself, I don't like being dictated to in this way - it's not exactly consumer friendly and is almost like saying "spend £300 on a phone, then give us £30/40/50 a month if you want to use it as a phone... thanks!" - putting it like that makes me think "Hell no!"

Any thoughts?

K.

[Anonymous]

Obviously this remains to be seen as no-one has reached the end of the contract yet but..

Ofcom in the past (I'm thinking of 3 in this case) forced operators to unlock handsets that are past the minimum contract whether they like it or not, So I have a feeling this may be the case (remember 18 months from now O2/Apple wont care so much about your 1st Generation iPhone as there will almost certainly be one or two newer models by then)

Obviously you can unlock the iPhone yourself but then wouldn't be able to benefit from future upgrades for fear of turning your iPhone into a very expensive brick however that seems fair enough to me, the numerous free upgrades are supported by the subscription model. If you stop paying for your iPhone contract it seems fair enough that you lose the right to free future upgrades.

No matter what if you use the iPhone on a network other than O2 (or any other network that Apple decides to use in the future) you will lose the VIsual Voicemail function as this is network-specific - the rest of your iPhone's features will work fine on any network.

[Anonymous]

Ah yes, very true - I do recall the whole fun and games with 3! I wonder if Ofcom will proceed along the same route with O2/Apple..

I think this is where things will get interesting, as if Ofcom do step in andforce O2/Apple to to carrier unlock their phones, essentially they'll open a massive legacy iPhone market (we've already seen some fun and games on eBay for imports or unlocked models), especially if the iPhone is fully unlocked from the manufacturer.

I can imagine a lot of people wanting a slightly older model with the full features, however It could also get messy as I can also see Apple refusing to repair or warranty the iPhone after the 18month window (and being out of contract) so it could end up being a risky approach for the consumer...

Unlocking the iPhone in my experience is actually scarily easy nowadays (I know a number of people who've had this done), you wouldnt be entitled to free upgrades and invalidate the warranty on the thing, but at least have a wider choice of providers. Again it's interesting that Apple's decisions in firmware upgrades differ from the other phone manufacturers (and the established expectations), Nokia for example won't dissalow a firmware upgrade to it's handsets just because you dont use a partner network.

Building network specific 'value added' features like Visual Voicemail in my opinion is where the networks could really gain, as this is something that would be a sales point for the network and not the phone itself - even though the iPhone may be the only (current) device that supports it!

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure Ofcom can/will do anything about this on the basis that O2 can argue they have paid for an exclusive deal with Apple and have built it into the T&C's that we all agreed to when we signed up to the contract.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, but if those T&C's are anti-competitive or could be considered unfair then they cannot be legally enforced....

Three tried the same thing and failed miserably

[Anonymous]

Good news for all, since last November O2 will now officially unlock iPhone's on request.

You can go for unlocking contract iPhone at any time for free (although you still have to keep paying the contract until complete) and initially Pay&Go iPhones could only be unlocked after 12 months for £15 but now it also unlocked immediately.

Process take a few weeks to complete, so you should fill in the form ASAP so that it is done by the time your contract is up. Even at this point if you want to stay with in connection with O2 on a monthly or Pay&Go SIM then also you can go for unlocking your iPhone, there is no harm in it.

[adamtemp64]

did you notice it was a spammer resurecting a very old thread one link already removed by mods that was for payg iphone the other spammer sells beds lol