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Problem with unlocked UK iPhone - help/advice needed

C

copydeskcat

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 12, 2008
257
4
Okay, my friend has an iPhone 3G which he bought from a family member, who was on O2.

My friend is on Virgin. He took the iPhone to a local place and got it unlocked, and stuck in his Virgin Mobile SIM, and all was well, until he went to sync it with iTunes. He got a message saying he had to insert a compatible SIM or the original SIM.

Basically, he can't do anything with it now. If he restores it, then puts his SIM back in and syncs - he gets the same message. He's tried putting an O2 SIM in it belonging to someone else. No joy.

What options does he have to get it working again?

All help appreciated.
 
seanwebb68 said:
did you get it unlocked through o2 or was it jailbroken then unlocked with ultrasnow?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure - as far as I know it was just unlocked so he could use his Virgin SIM in it. It hasn't been jailbroken.

UPDATE: He definitely hasn't jailbroken it. Should he just go straight to jailbreaking?
 
Last edited:
copydeskcat said:
Okay, my friend has an iPhone 3G which he bought from a family member, who was on O2.

My friend is on Virgin. He took the iPhone to a local place and got it unlocked, and stuck in his Virgin Mobile SIM, and all was well, until he went to sync it with iTunes. He got a message saying he had to insert a compatible SIM or the original SIM.

Basically, he can't do anything with it now. If he restores it, then puts his SIM back in and syncs - he gets the same message. He's tried putting an O2 SIM in it belonging to someone else. No joy.

What options does he have to get it working again?

All help appreciated.
Click to expand...

The place you took it to to unlock used standard dev team software tools to JB and ul the phone. When it was connected to Itunes my guess is that he did more than sync it. He also updated the firmware to the latest version.

You can check this quite easily by going to settings/general/about and check the version of modem firmware.

If the modem firmware is either 5.14 or 5.15 then he definitely updated it to an unlockable version. If the baseband is 6.15 you need to come back for different advice.

If the phone is on one of the unlockable baseband all is not lost. If this is an o2 phone then they will unlock it for you.

Go to this page to find out how. This is what he should have done in the first place instead of going to the backstreet shop.

http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html
 
nebo1ss said:
The place you took it to to unlock used standard dev team software tools to JB and ul the phone. When it was connected to Itunes my guess is that he did more than sync it. He also updated the firmware to the latest version.

You can check this quite easily by going to settings/general/about and check the version of modem firmware.

If the modem firmware is either 5.14 or 5.15 then he definitely updated it to an unlockable version. If the baseband is 6.15 you need to come back for different advice.

If the phone is on one of the unlockable baseband all is not lost. If this is an o2 phone then they will unlock it for you.

Go to this page to find out how. This is what he should have done in the first place instead of going to the backstreet shop.

http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html
Click to expand...

I'll try and find out more from him.

From what I understand, it was only unlocked, I'm not sure it was jailbroken.

I think he probably needs to go the full hog and JB it. Although, he's worried he'll lose all his contacts.
 
copydeskcat said:
I'll try and find out more from him.

From what I understand, it was only unlocked, I'm not sure it was jailbroken.

I think he probably needs to go the full hog and JB it. Although, he's worried he'll lose all his contacts.
Click to expand...

It is not possible to unlock without first jailbreaking it when you use software tools. Only o2 can do that. Believe me it was jailbroken.
 
nebo1ss said:
It is not possible to unlock without first jailbreaking it when you use software tools. Only o2 can do that. Believe me it was jailbroken.
Click to expand...

So, what do you recommend he does? He can't access the phone at all - when he restores it, it goes back to the "insert valid or original SIM" type message.

Should he restore it, then Jailbreak it?
 
To unlock it using O2 you need to buy an O2 sim, put £10 on it and then call and ask for it to be unlocked.

Fairly sure this is how its done, just tell him to go to an O2 store and ask for it to be unlocked.
 
MattZani said:
To unlock it using O2 you need to buy an O2 sim, put £10 on it and then call and ask for it to be unlocked.

Fairly sure this is how its done, just tell him to go to an O2 store and ask for it to be unlocked.
Click to expand...


On that note. I have an iPhone 4 on an O2 contract. I'm heading to the States later this year and would like to use my phone for texting etc. while I'm there with a US sim.

If I get my phone unlocked, I'll still be able to use it on O2, won't i?

And, will I be able to use a US sim on it when I go over?
 
Last edited:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

Put the O2 sim in goto that site and o2 will unlock it for free then any aim will work.
 
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