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Can you unlock a Verizon iPhone
- Thread starter Sedrick
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No unlocking is required on VZ phones. In place of a SIM to identify the phone CDMA uses a Electronic Serial Number. You will find though, each CDMA provider has a database of it's ESN's and will ONLY activate phones from their Database. So in effect they are locked and can not be unlocked.
how do change the carrier then? if we forgot the whole exclusivity thing and pretended that every phone had cdma.
You can not change the carrier. For example Sprint will refuse to activate a Verizon phone even if they sell the exact same phone that you have loaded with the sprint approved software because it's not in their ESN database.
You cannot, access is controlled by the ESN on the carrier's system. You're not in the system you cannot use the phone on their network.
ok so if carrier X has a CDMA phone then that phone can't be used on carrier Y which also supports CDMA.
Yep, there's no way to trick, force or otherwise get the iPhone on Sprint (or any other CDMA carrier).
Well, not yet anyway. We'll see what happens if it's jailbroken.
Cricket, for instance, accepts any CDMA phone. That's why there's services to flash Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, Qwest, etc CDMA phones to Cricket.
Too bad AT&T doesn't unlock their iPhone so normal users can get cheap calls overseas. Instead, the usual recommendation for ATT iPhone owners is often the same as for Verizon non-world-phone users: buy a thowaway unlocked GSM phone if you're traveling.
If you live and work in the USA, you clearly should go with the carrier that has the best coverage and reliablity where you spend the most time. That's why a lot of people use CDMA in the USA, and GSM when traveling.
you mean the same way you can fake your mac-adress on you w-lan card? yeah that would be pretty bad for the carriers, wouldn't it
He's a little busy with Sony right now, I'm not sure he wants the Feds breathing down his neck as well.
Good point... or you could buy a fully unlocked one from Canada (i'm pretty sure you can but not positive)? It's a shame Apple don't let you buy them direct and unlocked in the US.
Voice is simple. Once manual programming instructions come out (which they will most likely as some people may need it so I'm sure it's built in there somewhere) you can simply program your MIN/MDN into the phone and take it to any CDMA carrier. "IF" the carrier activates it voice will work fine.
Data is where it gets tricky. CDMA phones have the username for data (usually your MDN@carrier.com or whatever) stored deeper into the programming. This isn't accessible by the user. So the only way to change that is customer firmware (not going to happen w/ an iPhone most likely anytime soon) or going in through a 3rd party utility and changing it that way (dangerous).
When the BB Storm came out I wanted one on Alltel (pre-Verizon merger) so I worked with some people on Crackberry and we figured out how to change the Username/password and data settings but we had to use 3rd party phone tools and doing that can mess up WAY too many things.
You also have other values that may need to be configured which nobody will know until people can really get in there and review how it's already setup w/ those 3rd party tools... and it's just a lot of work.
If you don't do this you may have data, but it would probably be stuck at 1X since the authentication and configuration is much weaker.
So is it possible? Yes.
Is it likely? Not nearly as much as other phones
That's my 2 cents.
Data is where it gets tricky. CDMA phones have the username for data (usually your MDN@carrier.com or whatever) stored deeper into the programming. This isn't accessible by the user. So the only way to change that is customer firmware (not going to happen w/ an iPhone most likely anytime soon) or going in through a 3rd party utility and changing it that way (dangerous).
When the BB Storm came out I wanted one on Alltel (pre-Verizon merger) so I worked with some people on Crackberry and we figured out how to change the Username/password and data settings but we had to use 3rd party phone tools and doing that can mess up WAY too many things.
You also have other values that may need to be configured which nobody will know until people can really get in there and review how it's already setup w/ those 3rd party tools... and it's just a lot of work.
If you don't do this you may have data, but it would probably be stuck at 1X since the authentication and configuration is much weaker.
So is it possible? Yes.
Is it likely? Not nearly as much as other phones
That's my 2 cents.
ooh sony. how could you. apparently sony cant take a joke. because the jailbreak for the ps3 is hilarious.
If Sprint wanted the business, why couldn't they just add the cusotmer's ESN to their database?
