Unlocking your iPhone for use with other carriers is now simple, with software freely available on the internet. But it may not be all good after all, as Apple stated yesterday that unlocked iPhones can become inoperable after future updates. According to MacWorld, these were their exact words:

“Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.”

The company says, however, that they are not intending to make unlocked phones unusable and Steve Jobs said last week that their job in this cat and mouse game is to stop people from breaking in, i.e. not necessarily make life harder for people who already “broke in”. Those statements are reassuring but if your iPhone should stop working, Apple made it clear that you won’t have any warranty to back you up.

The next iPhone update is coming later this week and we’ll see what happens with the unlocked iPhones after that. I personally that the update will leave your phone intact. This is probably just a warning shot from Apple, telling you what they can do it if they want to.

I mean, iPhone sales would drop if people couldn’t unlock it and Apple knows that. They have no real reason to mess up your phone intentionally. No, I think they issued this warning to stay friendly with AT&T, and at the same time show that they don’t support unlocking and that they can do something about it. Pissed off customers is probably not what they want right now.

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