Bought a new EU region locked GN3 last week from Phones4U in UK on contract. The phone itself is sim unlocked, but region locked. After activating it with my UK Vodafone sim I immediately swapped in a Hong Kong Three network sim whereby the network region lock pin screen popped up confirming the lock.
However after using the phone for about 3 days I decided to try the HK sim again, but this time the network region lock pin screen did not appear. I made & received a couple of calls with it so can confirm that the regional network lock cleared itself after a few days. I also borrowed a friend's US sim which also worked fine.
My question is if I had to do a hard reset does the phone revert back to region locked or does it remain unlocked? Assuming it does re-lock do I have to go through the same procedure again to activate un-locking?
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Hi - I bought a G900F off ebay which is apparently sim locked to the EE network. My sim card is Tesco Mobile (great deal).
From what I have read, rooting/flashing custom Rom will not unlock the network sim lock.
Is my only option to have EE unlock the phone? Any recomendations for websites which are trustworthy and include the EE network?
Does it matter if the person I bought the phone off did not use the phone before? Would this mean it has a region lock?
This is all very boring, my GS3 was so easy to get working.
Thanks,
RG
It doesn't matter what the status of your phone is or what network it is servicing. You will just need to input the unlock code numbers on the keypad. You have to pay a fee of course.
guys i got a galaxy s5 from UK and my phoneshows signal bars even without a sim inside the phone (pic attached ) and whenever i put a sim it says 'sim network unlock pin' does this means its carrier locked or region locked? does those signal bars means that its ready use in country and phone just carrier blocked or what .. thanks fellas this is a SM g900f UK version with fully paid and bought from samsung store ( not contract phone with any carrier) and have used with with a vodaphone sim for like 4 minutes.. (received a call but non taken from it )
http://share.pho.to/7QgV3
Androidbatta said:
guys i got a galaxy s5 from UK and my phoneshows signal bars even without a sim inside the phone (pic attached ) and whenever i put a sim it says 'sim network unlock pin' does this means its carrier locked or region locked? does those signal bars means that its ready use in country and phone just carrier blocked or what .. thanks fellas this is a SM g900f UK version with fully paid and bought from samsung store ( not contract phone with any carrier) and have used with with a vodaphone sim for like 4 minutes.. (received a call but non taken from it )
http://share.pho.to/7QgV3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 3 bars are the signal strength as you can still make emergency calls, your message sim network unlock pin means the phone is sim / network locked you need a pin code to unlock it, take it back to the store you got is from if it is supposed to be unlocked to any network and get them to sort it, this should be free if you bought it as an unlocked phone.
Edit added 20:23
Just seen you other post here that you put up 2 hours before this one, why start another thread asking the same thing. In this one you say your brother bought it in the UK and sent it to Asia for you, it is Vodafone UK network locked, if it was bought sim free it would not be network locked.
Was it really bought in the UK or obtained in an alternative way other than being bought.
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fffft said:
Most likely it's a network lock. But you haven't provided enough information to be certain. You say that you got the phone in the UK but neglected to tell us what region you are using it in? Where your Vodaphone carrier is based or the context of the calls you have made. i.e used for 4 minutes where?.. and the meaning of "non taken from it" is uncertain.
If the phone is rooted, you can check whether it's region locked by looking at the customer.xml blacklist file. Or alternately pay for a network unlock and that will typically clear both network and region locks.
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im currently in Sri lanka (South Asia) and the phone is with me , but the phone was bought in UK , where my brother lives.. he said he wasn't aware of this region lock and he wasn't aware of the 5 mins call.. but just to check the phones functionality he has poped his UK vodaphone sim in to the phone and he has received a call to it for like 1- 2 mins . but he has not taken any calls to a UK number with it . what im currently getting is 'Sim Netowrk Unlock Pin' i think my phone is sim locked not reigion .. (or is it ?) . thank you very much for replying earlier
and also i followed your tutorial and checked the file (using es manager .. no rooting) and the result i got is attached as a pic below
http://share.pho.to/7R3ku
one more thing . all my country carriers are under one MCC code (413 ) . so editing that line in to a different number will solve the problem? ex- changing 413 to something like 222 or 567 ?? thank you!
after comparing codes in customer.xml and online found list .. it can be seen that all EU countries are not on the list (means this is region locked i asssume). will changing my country code to one of the EU codes will solve the issue? will my phone face any issues if i edit it without rooting (i have the ability to edit it without rooting using es file manager) thank you!
I bought the phone in India (in a most respected mall in Udaipur) and my Israeli sim was working fine with the Indian phone as long as i was staying in India. however, as soon as i got back to Israel (where my Sim card is from) the phone rejected the sim and asked for an unlocking PIN.
does anyone knows what it is and what can i do about it?
I think this one works search for this zx3box samsung unlocking device
Hi All,
I'm currently interning in India, but before I came, I purchased a n900 and paid an online service to unlock it and they send me these codes,
NETWORK=50777079
PROVIDER=89981835
SUBPROVIDER=64259048
DEFREEZE=50242708
EXTRA=03516020
I put them in according the instructions and the phone was unlocked. It worked in Israel and when I arrived in India I used a local BSNL SIM card for two days and then it abruptly stopped working and I was given this prompt to enter a pin on startup.
"PIN to unlock SIM service provider"
If I dismiss this prompt, there is a permanent notification that reads,
"Invalid SIM card
Network locked SIM card inserted"
When I remove the SIM, it detects there is no SIM.
I have tried factory reset, re-entering the unlock codes, and different SIM cards for a different provider. My SIM works on other phones, and I have spoken to the provider who insists is a phone issue and directed to me samsung who says they only fix phones purchased in India, so they gave me a customer service number who directed me back to samsung.
It sounds like region lock, but it was my understanding that the phone wouldn't have worked at all.
So my question is, how can I fix whatever this is?
Have you tried another sim in the note? Did you try the sim on another phone? Is it possible the phone has been blacklisted by the carrier?
I have recently moved from the UK to the US, taking with me my S8. I requested a SIM unlock code from Vodafone UK before leaving but when I went to use the code when I got a US sim, it didn't unlock. I contacted Vodafone and they explained that the code does not work out of the country as it needs to connect to the Vodafone network to be verified.
Is there a way of SIM unlocking my phone here in the US? (Short of sending it to a friend in the UK and living without a phone for ~2 weeks)
Cheers!