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Re-activating Sprint Iphone, will I lose international unlock?

A

anshuman26

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 6, 2010
4
0
Hi there,

I have a Sprint Iphone 4S activated before Nov 11. My sim slot is unlocked. However, if I did a factory reset (delete all data and settings), I believe I would be required to activate again.

In that case, do I lose the sim unlock? Since I think Sprint would push sim locks at the time of activation. I am not sure, if sprint has it in records that this phone was originally activated before Nov 11th and so the sim should not be locked.

Please advice, if someone has tried re-activating the iPhone post Nov 11, and still have their sim slot unlocked.
 
In the past, once an iPhone is officially unlocked the phone will stay that way.

Not sure about Sprint though.
 
If you have factory unlocked or carrier unlocked, does not matter. You will be able to re-activate over and over again as long as the sim card has network signal where you are planning to activate it.
 
well...it's a sprint iphone.....as you all may know, sprint iphones were sim unlocked for international use prior to Nov 11. However, since Nov 11th, the phones from Sprint are locked...

i believe the locking actually happens during the time of activation....so what concerns me is that if i did a factory reset and had to re-activate (since factory reset requires activation), I am afraid I might lose my international unlock...
 
All I know is that....

Well, my friend has a Sprint iPhone 4S activated before Nov 11th, he went to Settings --> General --> Reset --> and selected "Erase All Content and Settings". After the action the phone asked for activation (LOL, he thought it was gonna get locked). BUT, I'm surprised that it did remain unlocked after re-activating it.

My vendor told me that he bought some Sprint iPhones 4S for sale, and that he upgraded 3 of them to 5.0.1 and the phones remained unlocked.

But I still have my doubts, it's very interesting that there is no information about this when you google it.

If there are more people who can share their experiences would be great.
 
I am the owner of sprint 64gb iphone 4s and last month i had to restore my sprint phone. Before restore my iPhone was unlocked, after restore it shows itunes with white cable, so I connected to iTunes, and my iPhone was activated. It is still unlocked phone! I put inside foreign sim and it works.
 
but that is the catch, from what i understand, sprint phones will work with foreign sim's, they just wont work with att and tmobile sim's, so testing with foreign sim's is not exactly a 100% test of unlock.
 
macieiks said:
Any official note about that ? I'm just curious :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: google it yourself if you don't believe her. It was widely publicized.

That is Sprints position with all of their world capable phones. Domestically they ignore us based sim cards. If you are unlocked internationally then you can use any foreign sim card.
 
verwon said:
Thank you! ;-)

I actually did thorough checking to be sure. I do leave the U.S. occasionally.
Click to expand...

Ok, Thanks

I'm living in Europe so I asked. I don't know Sprint's policy.

Will I have the opportunity to make JB on my 4s, if pod2g release JB for A5 device? I don't want to fail and lost my "working" iphone... because of simlock :)
 
Sorry to bring up this old post. Back with the 4, I had AT&T's , can activate with AT&T SIM and iTunes.

Now I have a Sprint 4S. I am wondering how do I activate the phone after a restore? Just connect to iTunes?

Last year I bought Sprint 4S from eBay that came unactivated, I tried everything and just won't work so I had to return it.

Can any oversea (non US) Sprint owners share some info? TIA!
 
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