I have spent considerable time reviewing much of the discussion on this topic and cannot synthesize a decision. So here goes......

I will spend a month in Paris and will use my phone mostly for local calls, text messages, etc. Calls to the US will likely be VOIP (Skype), although I may occasionally not have access to Wifi.

Options that I have gleaned from this forum:

1. Unlock the (USA purchased) iPhone and use a local SIM card. I have ATT and am reasonably happy with it, so no intent to change carriers when I return. What are the implications of/problem with unlocking - legal, practical, otherwise?

2. Purchase an ATT international plan. Can I do that for 6 weeks?

3. Buy or use an old unlocked phone. Not a very attractive option since I have addresses, etc on my iPhone.

Sorry for rehashing what is probably already here somewhere, but any advice (especially regarding #1) would be appreciated.

In France the iPhone is not sim-locked, AFAIK! Sell your current iphone, if possible, for a reasonable amount of cash, and buy an iphone in France unlocked, maybe used, and the use it while you are there and bring it home with you...

Not sure how warrenty then works... Guess it is a "french iphone" then... But surely pssible!

You know my answer. Do the software unlock. I've done two of them, and it's very easy.

The ramifications are that if Apple thinks you unlocked it, I don't think they will honor the warranty. but the unlock is not destructive and you can put the phone into DFU mode at any time to revert it back to the Apple firmware and they would have no way of knowing that you ever changed it. As part of the jailbreak, you will have a copy of the stock firmware on your laptop already, and you just use itunes to restore it from DFU mode if you ever need to do that.

If you do the sw jailbreak/unlock then you need to be careful about updating itunes and you can't allow itunes to update the firmware on the phone. When there's a new OS release, you have to wait for the dev team to catch up. It usually doesn't take long for them to catch up. You can just follow the top posts on their blog when there's a new OS or itunes release to see what they say about it.

iclarified.com has decent tutorials for jailbreak/unlock.

The dev team blog is here: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

-David

I'm not the most tech savvy guy...by a long shot. But I don't understand the need to unlock or do anything else special for Paris. I spent two weeks there last Fall with my ATT Iphone, no problems. Turn off "data roaming" and yes, you can sign up for a country specific international calling plan for a month at a time. IIRC, it's @ $5 per month. I've done it several times for France, Ireland, Grenada, et al. Just call them before you leave, and can cancel as soon as returning home. No contract here, it's simply a monthly service.

Calls back to the US were billed @ 99 cents/min, not an issue if using Skype, as OP stated.

And what were local calls made within Paris? That's the point of unlocking - you can then buy pre-paid SIM cards from countless wireless providers in whatever country you visit, have a local number for that country and generally far less expensive local calls and texts during your stay abroad. Whether this is best for you really depends on how much you expect to use the phone or text.

And of course if someone needs to call you from the US or you need to call them, just use Skype or any other inexpensive VoIP solution.

Yes, you are correct. It's not a necessity. It just gives you more money saving options.

OP presented a list of options and asked about each one.

tech-savy or not, anybody can do the unlock. It really is that simple.

-David

Makes sense, Guys, thanks for teaching me something!

I know I'm in the minority around here, but here goes. I resist calls to unlock my iPhone. Worrying about iTunes, software upgrades, and having Apple say I voided my warranty don't seem like fun to me. And by swapping SIM cards all the time, it means that you can only make/receive calls from whichever number is active at the time.

When I go to Spain for weeks at a time, I take a second cheap phone (which never was locked to a carrier) and put a local SIM card in it. It's less about the money than it is to have a local number. My friends in Spain don't want to call a US number to ask me to pick up a loaf of bread on my way home. And when my Italian friend comes here, it makes me crazy that he makes me call an Italian cell number if I want to go for a drink with him.

I find that there's really just a handful of numbers I use when I'm in another city. It's not really a big deal to put them into the phone.

This discussion is very helpful, although I have not decided what to do.

A question: if I unlock and buy a local SIM card in Paris, will the mail, contacts, calendar, etc still work as they do now?

I should add that I currently use three email accounts (two Comcast, and my work email is via Entourage, which also updates my calendar automatically).

There is no reason for the average user to unlock their iPhone - the downsides (primarily a complete lack of support going forward and the potential to be excluded from any future software updates) significantly outweigh the benefits. Buy a cheap $10 Nokia phone online that is unlocked and use that when traveling with a local SIM.

The technical ease of performing the upgrade is irrelevant.

Yeah, they should no problem. What you typically want to do is take a backup using itunes first. If necessary, you can restore your settings from the backup after doing the jailbreak and unlock. (this is the normal iphone backup/restore of settings, etc in itunes, not to be confused with restore of the OS firmware in itunes.)

it's still a good idea to have a copy of those setting just in case you need to reenter them manually in any event (unlock or not).

Are you already running OS 3.0 or 3.0.1 on your iphone? If not, you can do that upgrade first if you want to. You will end up doing it anyway.

-David

Or buy a slightly more expensive unlocked nokia, install jokuspot on it, and you will turn your Nokia into a virtual hotspot which you can pair with your iPhone and push data to it that way. Or buy an unlocked Nokia e63 which is a cheapish unlocked smartphone. If you have subscribed to Mobile Me, you sync all your information from your iPhone to it. It will also support jokuspot.

I think international is the achiles heal of the iPhone. If you are on an ATT foundation (corporate account) there is a little published unlimited international data plan for iPhone (cruise ships, Saudi Arabia, and a few countries excluded -- but well beyond the 60 on their consumer international data plan). It works like the Blackberry International plan. There is an old thread on it in ATT's official forum - international section.

i hate to sort of hijack the post- but i will be in paris next month and since where i'm staying does not have wi-fi ,or didnt last time i was there last year, i sense that it would be useful to have an iphone with a 3g network.
i am with att now anyway. the problem is the horror stories i have hear about the bills when you arrive back home. if you have to turn off the data, then you dont get to use the features of the iphone, or is that included in their international plan or not?
is there in anyones opinion another 3g friendly device that is preferable?
i am very confused about all this so some help would be appreciated.

$65/mo for "unlimited" (ie 5GB like domestic "unlimited) data access. I just got it recently. It requires a 1-year committment, but if you know you're spending more than a few weeks out of the country, it's worth it, especially considering the ala carte option is ~$50/50MB/month.

aside from being able to use our iPhones overseas at reasonable rates? And ad useful services like Google voice?>

the locked iPhone is like a Porsche governed to 70mph. It looks cool but doesn't do much.