iPhone 5 in Argentina

Yesterday Apple released the details on their newest iPhone, the iPhone 5. While these events are getting less and less climatic due to the number of leaks that come out beforehand, the latest iPhone still has a number of great new features including a bigger screen, thinner size, higher-speed LTE network, faster WiFi, new earbuds and much more.

Want to get one in Argentina? You’re out of luck.

With the government’s import restrictions, and Apple’s refusal to produce the devices in Tierra del Fuego, local mobile phone companies have no plans to market the new iPhone in Argentina. Your only option will be to buy one overseas and bring it back with you. And if that’s your plan, you’ll have to wait at least a few weeks until Apple starts selling unlocked iPhone 5’s (the initial ones will be for AT&T, Sprint and Verizon only).

So, say you get one of these unlocked iPhone 5s? Great, but that leaves you with just one problem…

The new iPhone 5 also uses a new nano SIM which is smaller and thinner than the current micro SIMs. This means that an existing SIM card cannot be cut down to fit the new iPhone 5. Claro, Personal and Movistar all report that they will sell these nano SIM cards to customers who get their iPhones outside the country, but of course have no dates as to when that will actually happen.

Hopefully, the fact that Argentine officials love Apple products will speed up this process.

(Oh yeah, and don’t even hope for LTE speeds. Just be happy if your 3G actually is somewhat reliable.)

UPDATE (12/3/12): Looks like the nano SIM is now available in Argentina, so all those illegal iPhone 5s now work here.