Okay guys,

I've used the search engine and searched the web but I can't seem to find a question to my answer. Here's the story:

I live in Belgium, and my dad recently got me a jailbroken and unlocked US iPhone 4. After having used the 2G and 3G, I really got tired of always needing to jailbrake and unlock them in order to use them over here. Now that I have the iPhone 4, I was wondering if there isn't an alternative to jailbreaking.
Over here in Belgium, all iPhone being sold are factory unlocked. This got me wondering, what is it that makes a US iPhone factory locked and a European iPhone factory unlocked? My guess was that it's probably something inside the software, and this got me wondering if it's possible to copy/load a European firmware/baseband into a US iPhone. By doing this it would turn the locked US iPhone into a European unlocked iPhone.

So, is this possible? And if so, how?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by lonniedarko

I've used the search engine and searched the web but I can't seem to find a question to my answer. Here's the story:

I live in Belgium, and my dad recently got me a jailbroken and unlocked US iPhone 4. After having used the 2G and 3G, I really got tired of always needing to jailbrake and unlock them in order to use them over here. Now that I have the iPhone 4, I was wondering if there isn't an alternative to jailbreaking.
Over here in Belgium, all iPhone being sold are factory unlocked. This got me wondering, what is it that makes a US iPhone factory locked and a European iPhone factory unlocked? My guess was that it's probably something inside the software, and this got me wondering if it's possible to copy/load a European firmware/baseband into a US iPhone. By doing this it would turn the locked US iPhone into a European unlocked iPhone.

So, is this possible? And if so, how?

No.. It is not at all possible.

Read "cloning unlocked phones" section
Unlock - The iPhone Wiki

Also
Read: WildcardTicket - The iPhone Wiki

One of the nice features of the iPhone (and iPad) is that there is no such thing as "European" or "US" or "Japanese" or "Pick-your-region" models and firmware.
Apple devices come configured for *all* supported carriers, world wide and it automatically selects the configuration based on the network id reported. If all fails (unsupported carrier) it still allows the user to manually configured the device, provided that it's "factory unlocked".

Regional models is something common to other devices, either because of their "old design" (less memory or programming limitations) or poor software design (as seen with some incarnations of the Android OS).