If you purchase an iPhone directly from a carrier, a bricks and mortar outlet or an on-line store, it will be SIM locked so that it can only be used on one specific network. The networks make some hefty profits from the customers they lock into a 24 or 36 month contract. To ensure as many customers as possible are enticed into signing on the line, they offer really cheap, sometimes free, iPhones. With respect to the iPhone, the majority of the carriers that supply them, do so at a heavily reduced prices. It has been known for networks to offer the latest iPhone models at up to 5 times less expensive that the exact same model, but in an IMEI unlocked state.

But what if you want to use your iPhone on a different network? You have seen a carrier offering a text and data plan for half the price that you current service provider charges. Fortunately there are options available to enable the unlocking of a carrier locked iPhone.

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There were once several methods that could be used to unlock an iPhone , but not any more - the old software unlocking method no longer works. It used to be possible to unlock an iPhone by installing software on the phone, but Apple closed the loop hole that enabled this to happen, and the only method that can be used to unlock an iPhone now is a iPhone factory unlock .

It is surprising but often people were unaware that software unlocking would void the manufacturer's warranty on their device and could only be applied to handsets running firmware 5.1.1 or earlier. It is actually still possible to unlock an iPhone using this software method, but in order to do so certain criteria will need to be met. The phone you wish to unlock will need to be older than 2011, be running iOS 5.1.1 (or earlier) and not be an iPhone 5, 5c or 5s (basically an iPhone 4s or earlier).

The alternative method of unlocking is the [ur