iPhone mania is hitting Vienna. The release of the unlocked version in France and Germany resulted in a bit of a gray market here in the Austrian capital. Retailers and individuals have been traveling to Germany and France, returning with unlocked iPhones (which somebody told me are selling nearly as well as the carrier-locked versions) and selling them for around €1,000-1,500.

Personally, I think that’s an insane price to pay for a phone—even one as awesome as the iPhone. And I’d gladly use such a phone, but I get a free phone through my work and it’s very, very hard to compete with free, even with a beautiful, multitouch interface and gorgeous high resolution screen.

I fear for those, however, who have recently taken the extreme step of sending folks to NYC to buy iPhones in hopes that they will bring them back here, unlock them, and enjoy them at a tiny fraction (less than one third) of the price that other Europeans are paying for the same privilege.

The problem is, I would suspect, that any new iPhone comes with the SIM-unlock bricking code. Which means that, even if once could successfully unlock it—which I really doubt is possible at present—one would end up running the risk of a brick at any moment and would certainly be excluded from any software updates or would be subject to instant brickage should one try to sync it, perhaps.

I tried to explain this to them, but they wouldn’t listen. People argued that if it’s possible to sell an unlocked phone in France and Germany, then it must simply be a matter of correctly hacking the phone or entering some code or even popping a SIM from One in there. Brickage galore, me thinks.

Tut mir Leid.