AT&T today announced that starting on June 11th at 8AM you’ll be able to purchase the new 3G iPhones from their stores.  I’m assuming, but have not double-checked, that this means the Apple Stores will start selling the phone the same day when they open.

AT&T has announced that sometime in the future there will be a contract-free option when purchasing the iPhone.  This will bring the cost of the $199 and $299 phones (8 and 16GB) to a hefty $599 and $699 respectively. That’s a pretty steep price, but in line with the original iPhone’s launch price (which, while sold without a contract, required a contract to officially activate the phone).

What I wonder however, is if there is any real reason to buy the contract-free iPhone. Assuming you pay for the phone at the contract price, I would think you’d only be stuck with the $175 early-termination fee. I believe that is what my current early-term fee is, but AT&T could have upped this for the iPhone. So, assuming you were wanting to take your new 3G iPhone elsewhere, you could pick up the phone for $199, dump AT&T, pay an extra $175, and still end up paying under $400 for the phone, which would cost you more than $600 to buy without the contract.

This would still give you a phone that was SIM-locked to the AT&T network, but workarounds for this are always found. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find out what the actual early-termination fee is for an iPhone. But if you’re all about unlocking your phones, this to me seems like the cheapest way of getting an iPhone onto another network.


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