Apple iPhone 3G...Unlocked...And Apple-Sanctioned? No, It's Not April 1st...

Now this is bizarre. Until yesterday morning, I’d thought that Apple and AT&T were happily joined at the hip, at least in the United States. I’d heard of carrier-unlocked units being sold overseas…but now they’re available for sale Stateside as well.

At $799.99 for a 16 GByte unit, it isn’t cheap. Then again, it isn’t carrier-subsidized or refurbished, either, and hey…free shipping! Even if it was more economical, I probably wouldn’t be interested, although as the saying goes, everybody has a price. For one thing, it doesn’t yet support tethering for use as a wireless modem. Even when it does via the promised v3 firmware upgrade, it won’t support the 1700 MHz 3G data services band used by my GSM carrier of choice, T-Mobile. And don’t forget that carrier-unlocked is not the same thing as app-unlocked (which this phone is most definitely not).

But the promotion seems legit. All the important keywords are there:

• Never-Locked
• Full Apple Warranty
• Capable of Software Updates!

And Buy.com is a pretty solid retailer, as far as online merchants go (though nobody’s perfect).

So what’s going on? Here are a few other important keywords from the video clip on the product page:

• Because these phones are coming from overseas, the directions in the box will be in Italian or some other language.

Buy.com provides links to electronic versions of English-language documentation.

Persistent rumors suggest that Apple’s soon going to be rolling out an improved iPhone hardware design, with (depending on whose blog post you believe) boosted 3G data speeds, low-power 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity, a higher-resolution integrated camera with video capture capabilities, and Skynet support (ok, I was kidding on that last one). My take on Buy.com’s seemingly exclusive deal is that Apple’s doing whatever it can to burn through its inventory of existing units prior to the next-gen unveiling, and the company’s using Buy.com instead of selling the phones itself in order to avoid annoying partner AT&T…annoying them too much, that is…