Rumor: Unlocked French iPhones may not actually be unlocked

So due to laws in France, Apple couldn’t sell only a locked iPhone over there, they had to offer an unlocked version, granted at a noticeably higher price, but they still had to offer it. Well, now it’s looking like they weren’t truly unlocked devices, they were unlocked to the other carriers in France, but that’s it.

The rumor is that a SIM card from any other country except for France crashes both the SMS and the Phone applications. Furthermore, there is word that iWorld, the app generally used to fix this issue with unlocked phones, won’t fix it this time around.

At least that’s what the word on the streets is, so, if your intentions were to buy one of these highly overpriced Apple-unlocked iPhones and bring it over here, it sounds like that won’t work that easily. I am sure that if the proper members of the iPhone Dev Team were to get their hands on one of these devices it wouldn’t be long before they figured everything out, and maybe even made a copy of the copied firmware, but due to their high cost it isn’t seeming too likely.

Are French “unlocked” iPhone Country-locked? [via TUAW]