Last week Apple made its official announcements about iPhone carriers in Europe, including its partnership with T-Mobile in Germany. Now, as a T-Mobile customer in the USA (and the only other GSM provider in the States) I'm wondering how discriminating the T-Mobile branded iPhone for Germany is going to be since T-Mobile in the USA and T-Mobile in Germany are sister companies (they are both subsidiaries of Deutsch Telekom) and the only real road block with a USA T-Mobile iPhone is Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T. Would a SIM from a USA T-Mobile customer work in a T-Mobile Germany iPhone? Would the German iPhone be localized for just the German language, for a German-based phone number? Other than the phone number and provider information do SIMs have any other distinguishing information that the iPhone software could use to filter and limit use on?

In other words, can a 'locked' T-Mobile iPhone for the German market accept without issue a T-Mobile SIM from the US?

Doubt, I'm the only one who has posted this question, but it might be all for nought anyway. Given the current Dollar to Euro rate the €399 price of the 8GB model becomes $562. Plus of course shipping from Germany oh and befriending a German, and perhaps paying them a little for their time and effort your talking at least $600. That's more than a overprice unlocked iPhone on eBay is currently selling for....

On the plus side one wouldn't need to worry about a future iPhone software update breaking one's unlocked phone.

Comments anyone?