IPhone 5s, Bought in America, Can it be used in china?

My roommate is a Chinese exchange student and needs to get a cell phone. She has the funds to get the newest iPhone, either 5s or 5c. She can't wait to get one because she's going on a trip with the other exchange students to DC and some other cities and needs a mobile, but she wants to get a phone that can still be used in China. Her family is with T-Mobile and I believe she will be on her father's plan.

I called T-Mobile with no luck. All I got was a machine with no option to speak with an actual person.

Does ANYONE have the answers!

Ask your local best buy. But i do believe that the phone has to be unlocked to enable any person to use it overseas

If you are getting an iphone (any iphone or smartphone) you will need to have a 2 year contract. Which means you will be paying month for 2 years, so they will give you the phone for 200 dollars. BUT if you want no contract at all, but still wanna have data then you will go to T-Mobile and pay for the phone FULLY. Which will be 600-700 USD plus taxes. So when she is connected to T-Mobile as a carrier she can CANCEL the plan ANYTIME, and go to China. The phone will be unlocked. But if you have a 2 year contract you have no choice but to pay for month for 2 years. Unless you cancel it which may cost 150-200 dollars to cancel your plan.

It seems like iPhones purchased from T-mobile will be network locked. What your roommate needs to do is to contact T-mobile (if purchased from them) to have it unlocked. Depending on which network your roommate signs up with in China, it would have to be limited to the GSM network service and not cDMA service.

Ask T-Mobile to make sure the phone she wants to buy is not locked, and has no contract, if there are no lock and no contract, the phone can be definitely used in China for both China Mobile（中国移动）with 2g data access and China Unicom（中国联通）with 3g data access，but not compatible for China Telecom（中国电信）, since it has the CDMA2000 network like Verizion and Sprint do

Yes, but need to be active in China.

I have been a T-Mobile customer for over a decade, and have also travelled in China with my T-Mobile phone.

First, I did not have an iPhone at the time but my non smartphone did work in China. It was unlocked so that I could have put a Chinese SIM in it, but I did not. I just used T-Mobile service. There were some glitches at times, but it always worked to some degree. If she wants to use it with a Chinese SIM while in China, she needs to purchase either an unlocked version from Apple (that is what I use now) or it can be purchased from T-Mobile, but it needs to be paid for in full so it can be unlocked.

Second, T-Mobile just added a new feature that will be useful if she chooses to not use a another SIM. At no additional cost, in over 100 countries (including China) you now have unlimited free texting and data… Very useful! Calls still cost, but if you can utilize Facetime or another Wi-Fi service then that should not be a problem at all.