So I figure some of you must have some experience with this...

I'm thinking of buying an iPhone in Japan but want to be able to use it overseas too. I understand this requires you to "jailbreak" it and then use a local sim card though I'm not really sure what this entails.

Has anyone done this with one of the latest iPhones? any issues?

[s0apgun]

You can purchase an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy/home/shop_...ly/iphone5

After you pick your color you can choose a carrier or an unlocked version. You're going to pay full price for the phone this way instead of contract price with a carrier.

You can also buy them at the apple store but you may be limited to color and hardware availability in stock.

s0apgun Wrote:You can purchase an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy/home/shop_...ly/iphone5

After you pick your color you can choose a carrier or an unlocked version. You're going to pay full price for the phone this way instead of contract price with a carrier.

You can also buy them at the apple store but you may be limited to color and hardware availability in stock.

You will NOT be able to get a sim and a contract with a Japanese phone company with an overseas phone. The best you can do is a pay as you go sim with Docomo, and pre paid is VERY expensive compared to contracts here...

yeah that's what I had assumed.

really no one has jail-breaked a japanese iPhone?

[s0apgun]

Thats sort of the opposite of what nadiatims is trying to do... he wants to buy a Japanese iPhone and use it overseas. What about buying a Japanese iPhone with a contract that comes with a nano sim and just put that sim into an unlocked iPhone then sell the other one.

Jailbreaking is fairly simple, it just depends on your phone's baseband and ios version. All the info can be found here- http://blog.iphone-dev.org/tagged/redsn0w (don't fear the wall of text, it's not that hard)

There's no need to jailbreak, when you can just buy unlocked.
You can also try a data-only plan, if that suits your needs.