I have an Apple iPhone 4s from AT&T and I am now living in Italy. I have been using a cheap €10 cell phone while waiting for my contract to end. I called AT&T just after midnight on my contract expiration date New York time, and they told me I had to call back during Mountain time. 20 minutes after my contract expired I went to http://ATT.com/deviceunlock. I put in my information and requested the unlock. The message I received said that it could take up to 48 hours for this to happen, and perhaps as long as five business days. 10 minutes later I went to my email and had two emails from AT&T. The first, immediately received upon clicking the submit button on AT&T's webpage, basically gave me the information that I had received on the web. The second however was only one minute later, and told me that my device unlock had been approved. It told me to wait 24 hours to backup and restore my iPhone. However, I went ahead and tried it anyway, and got a message in iTunes saying "Congratulations! Your iPhone has been successfully unlocked."
The thing that took the longest was restoring my 64 GB iPhone. :)
Here are some useful tips for restoring your iPhone:
1. Even if you normally back up to iCloud, go into iTunes and switch the backup to your computer. Your restore will be much faster. You can always switch it back to iCloud once the restore is completed.
2. Once you have successfully backed up to your computer, I would recommend going into your iPhone's menu and completely wiping your phone clean before doing the restore. I had to do my restore twice. The first time I simply did a restore, and had problems getting everything back on the iPhone. When I tried to do a second sync to put everything back, I had 31 GB of "other", and I was told I had too much stuff. I then wiped the phone completely clean, and did a new sync, telling iTunes to restore from backup. It took 2 to 3 hours (same as the first sync), but everything restored perfectly.
3. if you have an iPhone and are living in a foreign country, for only $10 a month AT&T will suspend your service but you will not be breaking contract. I had three months left to go on my contract, and this was much less expensive than paying the remaining cancellation penalty.
The thing that took the longest was restoring my 64 GB iPhone. :)
Here are some useful tips for restoring your iPhone:
1. Even if you normally back up to iCloud, go into iTunes and switch the backup to your computer. Your restore will be much faster. You can always switch it back to iCloud once the restore is completed.
2. Once you have successfully backed up to your computer, I would recommend going into your iPhone's menu and completely wiping your phone clean before doing the restore. I had to do my restore twice. The first time I simply did a restore, and had problems getting everything back on the iPhone. When I tried to do a second sync to put everything back, I had 31 GB of "other", and I was told I had too much stuff. I then wiped the phone completely clean, and did a new sync, telling iTunes to restore from backup. It took 2 to 3 hours (same as the first sync), but everything restored perfectly.
3. if you have an iPhone and are living in a foreign country, for only $10 a month AT&T will suspend your service but you will not be breaking contract. I had three months left to go on my contract, and this was much less expensive than paying the remaining cancellation penalty.