well, due to my job i´m stuck here in europe.
i´ll visit my family in san francisco in october, and i thought this would be a nice chance to get me a new iphone.
how does this work in the US? can i just walk into an apple store and buy a carrier-locked iphone without the at&t contract? or do i have to sign the contract at this time?

thanks in advance!
smorf

I don't think they've announced it as yet.

They have said something along the lines of forcing users to activate their iphones in the AT&T stores though.
But if ziphone can be updated to activate/unlock it anyway then I doubt that will be an issue.

Perhaps you will only get the $200 subsidy if you buy through AT&T though...so it will really cost $399 (8GB) if you buy directly from Apple.

We'll have to wait and see!

buying the $399 won´t be a problem, the exchange rates from euros to dollars are pretty cool for having an european salary and buying things in the usa. ;-)

so how does this work with the iphones right now? you can buy the phones in an apple store and after that you have to go to at&t, get a contract and activate your phone, right?

Yeah I know...same with my UK salary
Everything's 'half-price' with a $2=£1 rate...even cheaper when you consider that the US prices are normally much cheaper than the UK prices anyway.

I think right now you can activate using iTunes, but they have a list of AT&T activated phones which means that unless you have a contract iTunes won't activate it. (Easily worked around using Ziphone etc.)

of course i know how the activate process in itunes works... but i´m not sure if the apple store sells the phone to me if i don´t already have a at&t contract. i just want to go to the store, buy me a locked phone and use zipho... erm... my at&t contract activation. ;-)

the only thing to know is: can i go to the itunes-store or do have to fall back to ebay, the local "flee market" or something else.

You can only activate the new iPhones in store.

That's what I've heard as well.

well, as activation is just a matter of software, it´s just a matter of time until that point is avoidable.
i mean, osx is also only installable on a mac. ;-)
the other thing is how to obtain an 3G iphone...

We will know once they are released...

They won't let you walk out of the store with an iPhone unless you sign a 2 year contract.

There's not going to be any point. You're going to have a signed contract with AT&T by the time you walk out of the store.