Brand new 3G-S iPhones

[The.Sniper]

All,
I want to give 2 new 3G-S phones to a friend of mine who lives outside of the country.

So here is my plan, Go buy 2 new phones 199.99 x 2 then immediately break the contract
@ 200.00 x 2 so total spent 800.00 give or take.

Then Black rain etc...

My concerns are without having the phones in hand How will I know what firm ware etc...
and if there unlock able?
I hope I worded this correctly.

Or more to the point. are all the phones now unlock able despite their firmware versions?
Its really the UNLOCK im concerned with more than the Jail breaking.

any insight would be deeply appreciated.
-=The.Sniper

[soulthoughts]

It will be unlockable and it will be jailbreakable the caveat is that it most likely will be a tethered jailbreak. 3gs phones with a serial that has a 4th digit of 4 have the new bootrom which is what causes the tethered jailbreak. If you can get ones with a 4th digit of 3, then you have an untethered jailbreak which is what you really want.

[The.Sniper]

This serial number thing... is it something that i can see printed on the box before opening.
Say I go into an apple store... and observe the serial on the outside etc..
then perhaps I can end up with the desired model.
or am I just shooting in the dark?

[soulthoughts]

It's on the box. The apple store won't have any, I'm pretty sure. When I was buying mine I called around to every ATT store within 30 miles of my house and had them look for me. None had any. I ended up going to my local walmart and they had a ton.