Official Unlock vs 3rd Party Unlock?

[timothyvanwing]

I see a bunch of Unlocked iPhone 4 s on eBay selling at a ridiculous price because it is an "official" unlocked iPhone.
My question is, I'm searching to buy an official unlocked iPhone but I see some that range from $500-$1,200. is there a reason why one is more expensive than the other. They both say the same thing: "unlocked iphone4 32gb" Why is this?

thanks for the help!

[i.Annie]

Yes, official or factory unlocked is forever unlocked. You can never lose the unlock. Restore as many times as you want, update the baseband, the unlock stays in tact.

A software unlock, you can only do so when the dev team releases unlocks for certain basebands. If you upgrade your baseband and that one is not unlockable yet, you will get locked out of your phone. Basebands are not downgradable so it is an irreversible thing.

That's why factory or officially unlocked phones are more expensive.

Edit: some people falsely advertise officially unlocked so beware of that. They could software unlock and pretend it's factory unlocked to trick you into paying more.

Beware of the "good deals" bc there are scammers.

A factory unlocked should easily be $700. $1000 is expensive, but $700-$900 is reasonable being 16GB on the lower end and 32GB on the higher end.