Boy Genius Report has gotten their hands on a legit-looking internal email detailing AT&T’s iPhone 3G protocols. It directly refutes all of my earlier pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking that you could buy an iPhone from AT&T, not activate it, and then get dinged on your credit card 30 days later for the full price of the phone. The jist: iPhone 3Gs will be activated at AT&T stores, end of story. The only question is whether or not Apple stores will force you to activate in store. By the wording of the AT&T email, it sounds like they’re not entirely counting on it, so that may still be an option. Otherwise, AT&T makes the provision that each customer can only buy three iPhones at a time, which means you’ll probably still be able to pick one up (for a massive gouging) on eBay, or be the lucky gouger yourself.
We’ll see. I’m starting to suspect that most unlocked 3G iPhones are going to be coming into America from the rest of the world this time around, which will be a nice reversal of the exodus of iPhones from Chinatown to Beijing which we saw last year.
iPhone 3G: the details you never wanted to know [Boy Genius Report]
What good is an unlocked 3G iphone though? Isn’t AT&T the only 3G GSM game in town (town being the USA)?