Unlocked Nokia Lumia 920 coming soon but no T-Mobile bands just yet

Up in Canada there has been some confusion around the status of the Nokia Lumia 920 on Rogers. It appears that early shipments of the phone were SIM unlocked and what’s more, they had the AWS 1700 band on board allowing it to work on WIND and T-Mobile US. That prospect at least offered some hope to those on those carriers without the 920 (aka most of them).

We’ve since verified that the later shipments of the 920 on Rogers are not SIM unlocked though you could pay the Canadian carrier $50 to do so (assuming you bought it under contract). As terrible as that is it’s still better than AT&T, which to our knowledge has not given out any unlock codes for 920 users.

Negri Electronics, a popular online distributor, is set to sell the Nokia Lumia 920 unlocked this Wednesday but for a price: $777.50. We’re not sure if that’s due to the extremely tight supply or just the unsubsidized cost but it’s not pocket change. The bigger question though is will it support AWS 1700 bands? The answer is no.

In our forums, the company responded to a discussion about the upcoming device and this is what they had to say:

“There is an issue with unlocking the Rogers Lumia 920. The issue is that there are no unlocks available unless current customers call and pay the $50 fee and only then will they unlocked the Lumia 920 that are active on their account, or purchased under their account. With that being said we do not have a solid ETA on when these Rogers Lumia 920 will be unlocked and ready to ship. If you need the T-Mobile 3/4G bands, it's recommended to wait until the unlock is readily available. If you do not require the T-Mobile bands we will have the Unlocked Lumia 920 Black in stock on Wednesday. However, we do have many pre-orders for this device, and we are giving Rogers 920 pre-orders first right of refusal to switch to the one that arrives Wednesday.

We recommend pre-ordering whichever model you desire. Worst case scenario you have an order and need to cancel. We do not charge before we ship. You are only authorized for that amount. We have to authorize your card, otherwise we have no guarantee that the funds are available at that time; which would mean that it was not a verifiable pre-order- which would be unfair to customers that already have pre-ordered and had their cards authorized. “

The good news there is it sounds like at some point there may be some unlocked Rogers Lumia 920s aka the ones with the 1700 band on board but it may be awhile as regular Rogers customers get first dibs.

The non-1700 band and unlocked Lumia 920 goes on sale this Wednesday, so for those of you who really hate contract, you may want to consider. We s suppose since the 920 is so hard to find even on contract, waiting for those phones to be unlocked and re-sold could take a few weeks until Nokia ramps up production capacity—whenever that happens.

Source: Negri Electronics; via Windows Phone Central Forums