How do you get an iPhone these days?

[GFLPraxis]

I have my 1G iPhone unlocked to T-Mobile, from back in the days when you could buy them in an AT&T store and walk out, take it home, and hack it.

It's in a sorry state these days- a bit scratched up, and a small clump of dead pixels at the bottom of the screen from a crack when it fell a distance onto concrete It still works fairly well, however, but the poor speakers, cracked screen, and slow network speeds scream update.

I may look into upgrading when the next generation iPhone comes out. But I'm curious- how do people get a hold of an iPhone without a contract these days? How would I go about getting one?

 

[patrickdunn]

eBay, Craigslist or the MacRumors Marketplace.

 

[fishkorp]

You can buy non-contract phones from Apple now. You'll have to pay full price though ($599 I think?). Keep in mind that most new in box phones you buy will probably come with 2.2.1 and the baseband that can't be unlocked.

 

[RandomKamikaze]

I just brought a PAYG iPhone from Carphone Warehouse.

It was jailbroken and unlocked about 2 hrs later

 

[tayshon]

eBay, Craigslist or the MacRumors Marketplace.

Yeah these are you best bets, just wait when the new one come out they will be flooded with 3G

 

[Vandam500]

You can buy non-contract phones from Apple now. You'll have to pay full price though ($599 I think?). Keep in mind that most new in box phones you buy will probably come with 2.2.1 and the baseband that can't be unlocked.

Not entirely true. Still some iPhone's sold by AT&T and Apple have 2.2. Also, I had previously updated to version 2.2.1 when it came out and successfully downgraded the baseband to 2.28. How? Well there is a program on Cydia Fuzzy Baseband Downgrader. The catch? You have to have bootloader 5.08 or loader on your iPhone. This is a hardware thing, so if you buy a new iPhone it will most likely have bootloader 5.09 or newer.

However, if you buy a refurbished iPhone they will most certainly still have boot loader 5.08 on it and then you can proceed to downgrade the baseband to 2.28 and unlock with yellowsnow .

 

[jmann]

I got my iPhone 3G off of craigslist. I traded my year old iPod touch 1st gen for it.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yeah these are you best bets, just wait when the new one come out they will be flooded with 3G

I don't think it will be flooded because the 3Gs are still on contract.

 

[kAoTiX]

If you can i'd hold out until the new one comes out because I too think there will be a lot of 3G's available on eBay/Craigslist.

I for one have mine on PAYG with o2 so I am not bound to a contract to keep my phone.
Saying that though, there are still plenty on eBay and Craigslist already just be careful as usual when buying something like this.

As for Apple selling iPhones, didn't they do some refurbs not long ago? Might be able to snag one of those.