Steve Jobs Accidentally Gave Russian President An American iPhone

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is known to be a gadget fiend. He Tweets regularly, he owns a Galaxy Tab, and is also an avid photographer who owns a $15,000 Leica camera. So, an iPhone would be perfect for him right? Well, Steve Jobs thought so, but unfortunately, the Apple CEO gave Medvedev an American iPhone locked to AT&T the last time he was in Cupertino.

Last June, on a “Origins Of Success” tour, Medvedev toured Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California. Steve Jobs was present and personally gave Medvedev the tour of the campus. Then, Jobs made a diplomatic snafu. He gave the Russian politician an iPhone 4 as a parting gift. But when Medvedev got back to Russia, he found that it was an American iPhone that was locked to AT&T (remember that this was way before the Verizon iPhone). Ooops?

Via Twitter, Medvedev’s Aide Arkady Dvorkovich wrote (machine translated from Russian):

that the phone was [locked] with AT & T, here – not working:)

While the iPhone is a GSM device and Russian carriers Beeline and MTS do carry the device, it’s locked to AT&T. I guess you could unlock it, but I don’t believe that AT&T here in the United States uses the same 3G (UMTS) bands as those carriers do in Russia.

Why would Jobs do this? He probably just asked some assistant to bring up an iPhone for the President of Russia. It’s mildly embarrassing for Apple, I guess, but it’s not like Medvedev could get an iPhone if he wanted. I mean, he owns a $15,000 German-made SLR camera.