A colleague is going to the US next week and he offered to get me an iPhone as he knows I’m after a replacement…..However I’ve been on the US Apple store and it appears the Handset only option is not available from the USA?! Can anyone shed any light on whether this is actually the case, I’m surprised if it is.

All handsets from the US are on contract, even direct from Apple stores.

Edit: Although, if I remember right, there might be different rules to outside-US residents buying them. Think the telcos sell it as a non-commitment deal.

AIUI Currently only sold tied to AT&T…

Will the networks be compatible?

They appeared as handset only on the website the other day. Give it a few days and hopefully they’ll announce it. Canada cheapest place btw

I tried to buy a tatfone a few yrs ago from walmart and they “couldn’t” do it without a plan thrown in

I put it down to corporate inflexibility at the time but maybe the network suppliers have bought some sort of monopoly somehow

The 4g wont work in the uk on o2, EE or Voda for the forseeable future as they use different frequencies in the states than the existing/proposed frequencies in the UK. Don’t bother unless you intend to go to the US or the UAE a lot

Will the networks be compatible?

Also, will the actual phones be compatible. The whole 4G thing looks like a right clusterf**k.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/14/us-apple-europe-spectrum-idUSBRE88D0NX20120914

..specifically:

Apple will produce three models of the iPhone: one optimized for U.S. carrier AT&T’s network and spectrum bands, another for Sprint and Verizon’s U.S. norms and a third for the rest of the world, including two European operators.

That’s because 4G doesn’t have a unified band, so needs endless variants. Whereas 2G and 3G had pretty well defined bands, so making it easy to do single chip sets and antennas to cover all the (limited) options.