I travel alot overseas and when I heard that the 4s would be a world phone I was stoked. But then reading today I noticed that all carriers would be locking the sim card slot to not allow local sims overseas, forcing you to use the expensive international roaming plans.
Well, that's their hope.
Actually, however, most carriers will remove the "simlock" if you have been a customer in good standing for (a period of time). For example, in Canada, Bell will remove the simlock after 90 days upon request.
Once the simlock is removed, you can pop the SIM that's in there and put in a new (prepaid) SIM from a provider in the country you are travelling to.
If you want and can afford it (or your carrier offers reasonable roaming options), you can just leave the SIM in the iPhone 4S, and it will work with any GSM-compatible carrier, but as you point out this can get expensive (but doesn't have to be). Again, one of the Canadian carriers (Rogers, I think) offers 30 days of US roaming for $25 (long distance applies, and there's no text or data in that offer, but you don't get hit with the "roaming" fees).
My question is if anyone knows if jailbreaking the phone (when it happens) will bypass this and allow me to use it how I need to
a. Don't hold your breath on that.
b. No, it wouldn't work anyway. Jailbreaking won't help you unless that then leads to a way to UNLOCK the iPhone. Breaking a simlock is pretty difficult and of course voids your contract with the carrier if they don't do the unlocking.
So, first step is to find out from an actual employee of your carrier (not a franchisee) whether the carrier will unlock your iPhone (either for a fee or what the deal is). AT&T absolutely won't do it no matter what, but Apple might be able to help you if you're done with your contract. Verizon and Sprint appear to have 90-day unlocking options, check with them to be sure.
If the carrier won't unlock the iPhone, you're kind of out of luck until either an unlock technique is developed or you're out of contract and can abuse the phone as you wish. I've been told that "fake SIM" products that used to work don't work with the iPhone 4 and 4S anymore.
, with local sim cards. This is a deciding factor for me and this phone so I'm crossing my fingers it will work.
Any help would be greatly appreciated![/QUOTE]
