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Unlock iPhone 5s by jailbreaking it

Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
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I have an iPhone 5s that I'd like to sell, so I can buy the iPhone 6s mini in a few weeks or so. (in the mean time I'll be using my iPhone 4)

The problem is, that there's a SIM-lock on my phone, making it difficult to sell it abroad, over eBay.
Unlocking it costs so much that it isn't worth it for this phone, so I was looking for cheap solutions to unlock it. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any, and everyone is asking pretty much for this.

So in that shop I was told that I could jailbreak the phone, and that this way, it would be unlocked, and then, to not sell it as a jailbreak, I could simply restore the original OS on it.

This way, I would have an unlocked, not-jailbroken phone to sell.

Is that true? Does it really work like that?
 
Fairly certain that jailbreaking doesn't unlock phones (at least it hasn't for quite a while).
 
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Hmm… I was also told the older the OS, the better it is, because there's no Jailbreaks or no good ones for the newer iOS versions. I have iOS 8.4.1 on my 5s so maybe that changes something.
 
That is 100% wrong, for many reasons:
1) software unlocks for jailbroken phones stopped ages ago, around the iOS5 era, when carriers became more willing to unlock phones (for a fee)
2) these software unlocks required the phone remain jailbroken. Any restores would revert them to their original carrier
3) there is no jb for 8.4.1 (there is for 8.4 and 9.0)
 
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Mr_Brightside_@ said:
That is 100% wrong, for many reasons:
1) software unlocks for jailbroken phones stopped ages ago, around the iOS5 era, when carriers became more willing to unlock phones (for a fee)
2) these software unlocks required the phone remain jailbroken. Any restores would revert them to their original carrier
3) there is no jb for 8.4.1 (there is for 8.4 and 9.0)
Click to expand...
Totally and EXACTLY this!

Jailbreaking and unlocking are two entirely separate things and since software unlocks died years ago jailbreaking a phone (on a version of iOS that is jailbreakable) will profit you nothing.

And upgrading the device to the latest version of iOS won't do you any good either because 9.2.1 does not have a jailbreak.
 
Hmm I see… do you guys know of another other solution to unlock it for cheap? My carrier wants 50€ for it. But it isn't worth it. I'd like to sell the phone as fast as possible ;) Many people won't know of the "SE" even shortly after it came out, because they're not constantly up to date like us or following this at all. So I think there's still good chances of selling it.
 
Sell it locally to someone who can use it with your carrier, or increase the price to cover the fee for unlocking it if you try to sell it elsewhere.
 
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Hmm I could in fact offer it for more and say it is unlocked. Because the fact it is locked scares people I think. Unlocking it through someone else, who isn't the carrier, is illegal?
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Hmm I could in fact offer it for more and say it is unlocked. Because the fact it is locked scares people I think. Unlocking it through someone else, who isn't the carrier, is illegal?
Click to expand...
There were some reputable providers but that has, apparently, severely waned in the last two years. You can certainly try it but if it doesn't work, getting your money back is a pain.

I wouldn't offer something as unlocked unless it's actually unlocked. You wouldn't want to buy something that was misrepresented (on purpose, no less), and neither would/should anyone else, really.

To put it bluntly there is a reason why unlocked devices demand more money. Unlocking a device costs money and therefore people are willing to pay the difference. If you feel people are much more willing to buy unlocked devices it may be in your best interest to just pay for the unlock. The phone will move faster and you'll likely see the difference back.
 
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