Unlocked iPhones Now Officially Available in the Philippines

Great news for Apple lovers in the Philippines: today is the day! Finally premium Apple resellers are offering unlocked iPhone 5, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4s — and they’re all official.

This is a great news here in the Philippines. Before today you could buy unlocked iPhones from unauthorized resellers all of which are “grey market” items. This meant that if you found a dent on your phone after opening it, you couldn’t replace it. That’s because part of the risk of buying grey market units is basically waiving your claim to any Apple warranty. And if your choice was to buy an unlocked phone abroad, that also came with its own pains as you cannot claim Apple warranty locally.

So if we wanted to buy an iPhone with a local warranty in the Philippines, we only had two choices: either buy them from Globe or Smart, the local carriers in the country, and both are locked to their respective networks.

The prices of the new unlocked phones, according to Technoodling, are still a bit steep vs. the prices of the gray market imports. However, they’re still quite tolerable if you want peace of mind.

iPhone 5 16 GB = PHP 33,600 (US$ 816)
iPhone 5 32 GB = Php 38,790 (US$ 942)
iPhone 5 64 GB = Php 43,950 (US$ 1,067)
iPhone 4S 16 GB = Php 28,425 (US$ 690)
iPhone 4 8 GB = Php 19,415 (US$ 472)

Source: Technoodling.net