“The seller was a man in Thu Duc district who advertised his product on an ad. I bought it because the price was VND2 million lower than the price quoted at physical shops,” he said.

Vietnamese want international iPhones

Khoa tested the phone before making a payment, but he did not discover that this was a locked iPhone. Some days ago, when Khoa tried to update iOS, the phone became unusable.

When he brought the phone to the shop to have it fixed, the technician told him that it was a locked iPhone and could be used for several days thanks to a micro givey sim attached to the circuit board inside.

The owner of a private shop in HCMC confirmed that locked iPhones have returned to the market. The locked iPhones can be turned into international ones thanks to a ‘magic givey sim’ which is soldered to circuit board and difficult to see. 

 In fact, givey sim was used to unlock iPhones and turn locked iPhone versions into international ones in the past. The givey sim, which had the same size as nano-sim, was attached to the main sim. The neo-givey sim is much smaller, and under the circuit board.

Since the neo sim is tiny and soldered to circuit board, one can only discover it when looking with a magnifying glass or microscope.

According to Nguyen Vu Phuong from an iPhone shop in Tan Binh district, the givey sim appeared years ago when iPhone 4 was launched on the market. In the last two years, his shop has discovered 200 cases of givey sim.

Meanwhile, the number of locked iPhones using givey sim has soared in the last two months.

Phuong said locked iPhones are no longer favored, though their basic problems can be fixed with givey sim or ICCID. Since there is a big gap in price between locked and international iPhones, many sellers turn locked iPhones into international ones to be able to sell at better prices.

“The micro givey sim has been used mostly for the latest generations of iPhones,” he noted.

In the market, a locked iPhone 8 64 GB is priced at VND7 million, while an international one is VND9 million and an authorized distributed product is sold for VND17 million.

Mai Lan 

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