Looking to get your hands on an iPhone 5 totally unlocked? Tonight your first chance to get an unlocked iPhone 5 directly from Apple’s website. Pricing has yet to officially be unveiled but is expected to be around $649, $749 and $849 for the 16, 32 and 64GB versions, respectively.

Keep in mind that this is only for online sales, as Apple’s chain stores have yet to start carrying unlocked phones. Apple does plan to offer unlocked iPhone 5 units soon (units already arriving in stores) but has yet to drop an official date.

So when can you order your unlocked iPhone? It’s expected to go on sale as soon as 9PM tonight, according to sources reporting to 9to5 Mac. For those that simply want a great unlocked phone but don’t care what ecosystem it runs on, you could also consider the cheaper $299 LG Nexus 4 which is now back in stock from Google.

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This has now been confirmed by the Verge. If you go out and buy the iPhone 5 from Verizon, assuming that you can find stock, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear that the iDevice comes fully unlocked right out of the box. What this means is that you can go ahead and replace that Verizon nanoSIM with one from AT&T or T-Mobile and have it work too. This is particularly useful if you are traveling internationally, because it means that you can pick up a prepaid SIM at your destination and avoid those nasty roaming charges. Of course, many carriers don’t have prepaid nanoSIMs yet, so you may have to break out the scissors and carefully snip the regular SIM or microSIM down to nano-sized proportions.

The good news is that the Verizon iPhone 5 should be fully compatible with the 3G network from AT&T. The bad news is that it won’t work with AT&T’s 4G LTE, since it uses different bands that Verizon. This also means that you’re likely stuck with 2G/EDGE if you pop in a SIM from T-Mobile, though Old Magenta is reportedly rolling out some iPhone-happy 4G HSPA+ coverage in cities like Seattle, Las Vegas and New York.

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My friend Gary from iPhoneinCanada.ca started lining up outside the Apple Store at Pacific Centre (Downtown Vancouver) last night and, as of 6am this morning, he said the line was about 300 deep. I’d imagine lineups would be similar at other major stores across the country. Crazy!

So, in case you haven’t heard (and you didn’t go line up this morning), here are the prices for the iPhone 4 in Canada. Just make sure you sign up to get that free bumper case too!

• Telus: 16GB/32GB iPhone 4 for $159/$269 with a three-year contract, $649/$749 outright
• Bell: 16GB/32GB iPhone 4 for $159.95/$269.95 with three-year contract, no outright price available on website
• Rogers/Fido: 16GB/32GB iPhone 4 for $159/$269 locked on contract, $649/$749 outright
• Apple Store: 16GB/32GB iPhone 4 unlocked without contract for $659/$779

Based on this, you can pay a slight premium ($10-$30) to buy from the Apple Store to get a completely factory unlocked iPhone 4 versus the outright price at Telus or Rogers, both of which will presumably have their iPhone models locked to their respective networks.  One thing that is still unsure is the data plan for Rogers and Bell have 6GB for $30, but Telus is mum.  Did you grab an iPhone today?

[iPhoneinCanada]
Photo: tomsaint/flickr

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The Apple iPhone 4 will be available through the three big carriers — Telus, Bell, and Rogers — as well as some of their smaller subsidiaries like Virgin and Fido. More likely than not, the three-year contract price for the 16GB and 32GB models of the iPhone 4 will be like the launch prices of the iPhone 3GS: $199/$299.  However, CBC is also reporting that the iPhone 4 will also be made available in unlocked form outside of a contractual agreement. As with all unlocked phones, you’ll be paying a premium. A 16GB iPhone 4 will be $659 and the iPhone 4 32GB will be $759.

To put that in perspective, the iPhone 3GS 8GB can currently be acquired in an unlocked state for $549. It can only be expected that the iPhone 4 will cost more than that. The only question that remains is whether you want to pay the unlocked premium and spare the shackles of a contract, or if you want to ink a new agreement and get a substantially subsidized price.

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If you were to walk into a Rogers store today to buy an iPhone, it would come preloaded with a Rogers SIM card and it would be locked to the Rogers network. That will still be the case when you go to the stores of each respective carrier, but Apple Stores are going to be carrier-neutral.

This is presumably in an effort to best allocate its stock, accommodating as many customers as possible. The word on the street is that when the iPhone stock arrives at an Apple Store, each of these handsets will be factory unlocked and will not come with a SIM card inside. Instead, the SIM card will be packed separately.

Yes, Apple Stores in Canada will be loaded with unlocked iPhones in their inventory, but they’re not completely unlocked. The rumor says that as soon as a Telus SIM card is inserted in the iPhone, for example, it will become locked to Telus. The same with a Bell, Rogers, or Fido SIM.

Does this mean that someone could presumably walk into an Apple Store, grab the unlocked iPhone, and insert an international SIM card for use in another country? It’s unclear at this point whether these phones will be made only to recognize one of the four Canadian carrier SIM cards, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Source: iPhoneInCanada

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