Excuse me for a minute, I have to go and bust out a mediocre rendition of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’. Somewhere between quitting time and getting back to work this morning, Apple must have decided that Canadians should be able roam freely around the Great White North on whatever carrier they choose, because my feed reader is full of the great news that Apple’s giving Canadians SIM-Unlocked iPhones.
Canadian’s now have the ability to purchase a SIM-unlocked phone directly from Apple, or they can sign up to a contract with one of the iPhone partners on release day. That’s as much of a Win-Win situation as we can possibly imagine when it comes to cellphones up here.
What’s it mean for consumers? Well, if you’ve got the cash, you can now purchase an iPhone contract free. But, if money’s a little tighter than usual, and you need a subsidized phone, you can still sign a traditional contract with a carrier. Win-Win.
Pricing for an unlocked iPhone 4 is still unavailable in Canada, so we don’t know the specific prices for that particular phone. Apple does have a SIM-Unlocked 3GS listed on their website for $529.00, so you can assume that the iPhone 4 will be well north of that price.
In the UK the SIM-Unlocked 3GS comes in at £419.00 ($634.93 CAD), and the base iPhone 4 at £499 ($756.18).
The difference between the UK models, when converted from GBP to CAD works out to be about $121.22 CAD (80.00 GBP), so we should probably expect the SIM-Unlocked iPhone 4 to be approximately $650.00 for the base model.
Is $650.00 worth the price of a new iPhone 4G that’s SIM-Unlocked? I’m hesitant, but it may be just enough to let me leave Rogers behind entirely.
