Ok, I'm going to try to make a long story short, i hope that i've posted in the correct forum, I've been scouring this forum and others but nothing I've found has quite fixed my issue.
Got my S4 locked to Bell in Canada. Heard it was really easy to unlock [service menu *#0011# method] but once I got to Indonesia [for travel] expecting to be able to use my phone I found that the service menu was no longer available. Ok, no problem, there must be other ways;
I ended up paying for an unlock code from a site, it didn't work. In fact, immediately after I press 'unlock' it would say 'network unlock unsuccessful'.
I thought they gave me a faulty code but when the code I bought FROM Bell was the exact same one, and had the exact same problem I figured it was likely 'region locked'
I ended up flashing a stock rom with odin, one from a weird unlocking site, and eventually I got it working. The only problem was that whenever I'd go into screen lock I'd lose reception and have to airplane mode on and off to get it again.
After Indonesia I went to Turkey, was unable to connect at all with one of their service providers, but had no problems with Vodafone. I think this may have been a side effect of regionlock away app, I needed to use that as well.
Once I got back to Canada I went custom recovery with cwm and flashed Cyanogenmod. This was fine, no reception problems, 10.2 - 11 was all good.
NOW I am in Poland, and getting the same problem I had in the first place. Whatever Cyanogenmod did, re-locked my device, in some way, I'm guessing.
I'm now rooted, with TWP recovery, running Android 4.4.4 Dave GPE rom, and would REALLY like to be able to use my Polish sim card with this fantastic setup. Chainfire's regionlock away app does not work, gives me a CSC error message. My phone now says it's an i9505 instead of i337m
Anything I have overlooked? Any way I can get this fully unlocked and working the way I want it to?
*NOTE* I can't access *#0011# service menu, even though I flashed [i think] stock dialer.
You are not in the correct section
You need to be in this section.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4-att/general
I can help you a little though. If the unlocking methodes fail, then it's usually because you don't have an older modem. You need to look for the modem you should flash in order for it to work. Afterwards you can flash the modem again you are on now. If you can't find it, just flash an old modem and try.
I find it hard to believe that Cyanogenmod could have caused this though.
Cool, that will be my next phase of attack. I appreciate the redirect and thoughts (Y)
Hey all, just a few days ago my rooted Galaxy S4 SGH-i337m running KitKat 4.4.2 NE1 with Fido Canada suddenly said "Emergency Calls Only".
I rebooted it and it says :"your sim card does not allow a connection to this network". It has been working great for months until now. I have removed battery, sim card reset to factory, wiped cache and reloaded again. My sim card works fine in my Motorola RAZR, no problems whatsoever.
This is what I used with Odin:I337MVLUFNE1_I337MOYAFNE2_FMC. Still same issue. WiFi and everything else works just fine. APN is all fine also.
My S4 is not unlocked, just rooted ( but now it isnt after factory image reset.
Dunno what to do. I have even put a new Sim Card in but to no avail and it works also with my Motorola RAZR.
Any ideas??? Knox has been tripped so if I have to send it away, wonder how much it will cost?
Thanks
Kind of figured out that the NV/RUIM:SIM was messed up because my phone was picking up all the networks so it had to be something fairly simple. SO I downloaded Rogers KitKat from Firmware site ( so I thought ) and flashed it thru Odin 3.07. After it had finished and I had wiped my phone with Philz to load a new ROM I was shocked that it was Version 4.2.2!!!!
Now my connection is back, and the menu for unlocking the phone was all there so I did that while I was at it. Don't have another carriers Sim card to test it out but I followed instructions to a Tee and I am assuming that it worked.
Just have the WiFi/sound problems to deal with. I am ****ting car sized bricks as I thought you couldn't downgrade like that!!! I hope I can upgrade again as I had no problems with the 4.4.2.
Will search the Forums some more but in case anyone has the answer, please let me know as I am at work so time is limited.
Can I now load 4.4.2 Stock Fido Formware back onto my phone or will it totally screw up??? Knox was already tripped so I have nothing to lose
Before you judge me by saying how i'm posting something thats done before, it hasn't, I've searched everywhere no methods work
Please, someone help me I've been at this for 4 days now and maybe just 15 hours of sleep :crying:.
The phone I have right now is the SGH-i337m Galaxy s4 running NC1 with MDJ modem (Kitkat 4.4.2) Does not detect sim, it says "No sim available".
I'm not exactly sure if the phone is from Bell but the phone use to be running fine on my old rogers sim card until I updated to their new ShareTap Sim.
With the ShareTap Sim the phone doesn't detect my sim anymore. So I tried my Share Tap Sim in another unlocked phone (Galaxy note 3) it worked fine.
Then I tried a Virgin mobile sim card on the S4 and it detected it and worked fine also. So then I tried to unlock it by flashing it with many different methods:
1. I tried flashing a older version of Bell 4.2.2 but it bricked my phone ( I already unbricked it back to 4.4.2)
2. I tried flashing the MDJ modem but it doesn't show the hidden menu.
3. I tried flashing ATT modem to try it but that also bricked my phone.
4. I tried to use the AWS tutorial shown here
5. I tried the regionlock away tutorial here in the third method (RegionlockAway doesnt do anything to my phone)
6. I pulled the modem.bin from the TAR file from sammobile of Bell's 4.2.2. But it still doesn't show the hidden menu! It's the MDJ modem but it still doesn't work!
I'm not sure whats wrong with my phone. When I put the Virgin mobile sim card in there it only shows Telus, EXT and Virgin Sim networks available not the whole spectrum which is what is supposed to happen with the 337_aws.qcn file from the AWS tutorial. Then when I flash MDJ modem from bell or the one from this dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2m3id2cx4l...37MVLUAMDJ.zip
It still doesn't show my secret menu.
The secret menu I'm trying to access is the *#0011# but if that didn't work I also tried the *#9090# It still doesn't show the secret menu. So what do I do now? Please Help!
Thanks for reading!
Sorry to hear that, but you are in the same situation i was, the phone was probably sim-unlocked by Box Software, like Octopus or Z3X Boxes as i did, the phone won't recognize some sim cards by unknown reasons, there is no fix avaliable for this as i changed imei, tried different NVM from other phone & even replacing sim card reader. i finally sold it & got myself a i337m unlocked via code.
Edit:
forgot to mention, My SIM stopped being recognized when i upgraded it to a newer LTE version
Kind regards.
Have you tried stock NC1 with the included modem? If the device is unlocked, you might have better success with SIM recognition. In my case, my device was not unlocked, so I Odin flashed stock Telus MDJ, then rooted with CF-Auto-Root, unlocked with RegionlockAway (KNOX tripped), and applied the AWS Mod.
Then I flashed stock NC1 with the incl. modem (root gone), and managed to get Rogers LTE and Wind H+ on the Telus device. From there, I OTA updated, and rooted with CF-Auto-Root, flashed TWRP, and worked my way to 5.0.1. Trust me I know how frustrating this can be, but thanks to this forum, there was a solution. Here's what worked for me (link). Good luck.
So after 2 years of problem free usage, my S4 all of a sudden told me that there is no sim card. Reboot fixed it for a bit, but the message returned later. Now I can't get rid of it.
Bit of a back story:
-I bought this phone (I9505) in EU (Germany). I live in Canada now.
-Was running Slimkat ROM for a really long time, starting with 4.4.2, and upgrading it to 4.4.4.
-When this issue came up, I tried:
Wiping cache
Flashing a lollipop rom
Flashing another baseband
Flashing stock samsung rom
Other sim cards
New sim tray
RegionLockAway
At this point, the device is on stock 4.4.2 from Samsung. It recognizes my EU sim cards, but not the Canadian one (Rogers).
Is the device region locked? I'm just about ready to smash it with a baseball bat, in all honesty. Would any of the unlocks from fastgsm.com work for me? Anyone got any ideas?
Custom ROMs such as SlimKat don't have the region lock included in them, so RegionLock Away is useless on them. Your initial comment of the reboot fixing the problem led me to think the motherboard was the problem. However, your comment about the S4 recognizing your European SIM cards disproves that line of thought.
Going through the list of things you tried, the first four wouldn't correct the issue, and in fact could reintroduce the region lock if it's a stock ROM. Option 6 worked, again based on your comment about the SIM cards, but it didn't fix the problem. RegionLock Away would remove any region locks present in the S4 firmware, as that is what it is supposed to do. However, this did not resolve your problem, which leads us to number 5.
When you mention trying other SIM cards, did you try only the SIM cards you had available? When your Rogers SIM is inserted, do you get an icon like in the attached image? The objective here is to eliminate your Rogers SIM as the source of the problem. Based upon what you've provided in your post however, the SIM card itself is the likely culprit here. If the SIM card tray had gone bad, NONE of your SIM cards would have worked. If you had a region lock active you would have received a notification that the SIM was invalid, and not the circle with slash in the image. To test, you need to do either of the following.
1. Try your Rogers SIM in another device.
2. Head to the nearest Bell or Telus store and use one of their SIMs to test.
If the Bell or Telus SIM works in your S4, then you don't have an active region lock and the Rogers SIM is bad. If the Rogers SIM doesn't work when inserted in a different phone, then the Rogers SIM is bad.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Custom ROMs such as SlimKat don't have the region lock included in them, so RegionLock Away is useless on them. Your initial comment of the reboot fixing the problem led me to think the motherboard was the problem. However, your comment about the S4 recognizing your European SIM cards disproves that line of thought.
Going through the list of things you tried, the first four wouldn't correct the issue, and in fact could reintroduce the region lock if it's a stock ROM. Option 6 worked, again based on your comment about the SIM cards, but it didn't fix the problem. RegionLock Away would remove any region locks present in the S4 firmware, as that is what it is supposed to do. However, this did not resolve your problem, which leads us to number 5.
When you mention trying other SIM cards, did you try only the SIM cards you had available? When your Rogers SIM is inserted, do you get an icon like in the attached image? The objective here is to eliminate your Rogers SIM as the source of the problem. Based upon what you've provided in your post however, the SIM card itself is the likely culprit here. If the SIM card tray had gone bad, NONE of your SIM cards would have worked. If you had a region lock active you would have received a notification that the SIM was invalid, and not the circle with slash in the image. To test, you need to do either of the following.
1. Try your Rogers SIM in another device.
2. Head to the nearest Bell or Telus store and use one of their SIMs to test.
If the Bell or Telus SIM works in your S4, then you don't have an active region lock and the Rogers SIM is bad. If the Rogers SIM doesn't work when inserted in a different phone, then the Rogers SIM is bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I restored my backup of the Lollipop ROM, which doesn't detect any sim card. The backup has a different baseband that I had flashed before.
To answer your question, I don't see that icon. I've been to the Rogers store and my sim worked in their device, but their working sim did not get recognized in mine. That's when I tried replacing the sim tray (to no avail).
So this is what I'm thinking:
Flash the open european 4.4.2 rom from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2265477
Figure out what baseband it's running and get the latest one
Flash lollipop and flash updated baseband (would be nice to be on 5.0.1, but I guess I can skip this step if it doesn't fix my issue)
Root, unlock
BTW Is RegionLockAway actually compatible with 4.4.2 and i9505?
Thanks for your feedback so far!
RegionLock Away should work on Android 4.4.2. It requires root, as I'm sure you know, because it rewrites a system file. In simple language, it wipes out the region lock table in one of the files. When I used it on my I9505 however, I had downgraded to 4.2.2 to take advantage of RegionLock Away's unintended side effect of fully unlocking the S4. So I personally would downgrade the modem to a 4.2.2 version, run RegionLock Away and take advantage of that unintended side effect, then upgrade the modem to 4.4.2 at least.
There is a possibility that your SIM lock is back on the phone, thus why I recommend the downgrade. Without going into details, I was getting that circle with slash icon, downgraded, and found out that not only was my SIM tray toast, but the SIM lock had returned. I replaced the tray. RegionLock Away got rid of the SIM lock and region lock.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
RegionLock Away should work on Android 4.4.2. It requires root, as I'm sure you know, because it rewrites a system file. In simple language, it wipes out the region lock table in one of the files. When I used it on my I9505 however, I had downgraded to 4.2.2 to take advantage of RegionLock Away's unintended side effect of fully unlocking the S4. So I personally would downgrade the modem to a 4.2.2 version, run RegionLock Away and take advantage of that unintended side effect, then upgrade the modem to 4.4.2 at least.
There is a possibility that your SIM lock is back on the phone, thus why I recommend the downgrade. Without going into details, I was getting that circle with slash icon, downgraded, and found out that not only was my SIM tray toast, but the SIM lock had returned. I replaced the tray. RegionLock Away got rid of the SIM lock and region lock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried what you suggested. When I run RegionLockAway I get this message: http://dl-1.va.us.xda-developers.co....jpg?key=-d8VgjHV1_MaPeiioYPGfA&ts=1427415458
Side note:
After wiping everything and flashing stock, my sim card was recognized for a few seconds. I received some messages and got some coverage. Then I got the sim card undetected error again.
Your attachment didn't work so I don't know what it said.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Your attachment didn't work so I don't know what it said.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I reattached it.
I also can't seem to downgrade anymore. Download mode gives me an error something fuse 2 : binary 1, whenever I try to flash a lower version ROM
Any idea if I can sim unlock with an unlock code? I'd rather pay than waste any more time on this :\
That's a new one. Perhaps you should bring that up in the RegionLock Away thread and see if Chainfire knows what's going on. That could very easily be some added security that was added by Samsung in Android 5.0.1. Or it could simply be Knox objecting, in which case you have to disable Knox.
While I've recommended RegionLock Away to unlock phones, it doesn't have a 100% success rate, and it's not guaranteed the unlock will stick after an upgrade. Purchasing an unlock code is usually a better choice, even though you're paying for it.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
That's a new one. Perhaps you should bring that up in the RegionLock Away thread and see if Chainfire knows what's going on. That could very easily be some added security that was added by Samsung in Android 5.0.1. Or it could simply be Knox objecting, in which case you have to disable Knox.
While I've recommended RegionLock Away to unlock phones, it doesn't have a 100% success rate, and it's not guaranteed the unlock will stick after an upgrade. Purchasing an unlock code is usually a better choice, even though you're paying for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SuperSU tries to disable Knox though, and it says it accomplishes it. So just to get this straight, Knox is introduced in one of the newer stock Samsung roms. Once it makes it on the device, it's not going away no matter what rom I flash or which backup I restore, right? And if I do try to fiddle around, it will go 0x1 on me and void the warranty (not that I have one at this point). Is it supposed to prevent me from downgrading as well? Or is that a side effect of something else?
BTW, every time I boot up now I get a message in the top left corner saying something like "Kernel is not seandroid enforcing" in red, followed by "set warranty bit: kernel" in yellow.
I ordered an unlock code from fastgsm yesterday. Let's hope that works. Though I gotta admit, after owning an S3 and the 2 years that I got out of this S4 I think I'm officially done with Samsung. I paid $600 bucks for this phone, I should be able to mod it however I want. Especially if they push their stupid bloat and TouchWiz on me.
Knox is part of the bootloader, so it's not going away. You can however remove the Knox apps from the ROM. The Knox flag will trip if you attempt to install a custom recovery, but whether you lose any remaining warranty or not is subject to debate. It's not supposed to prevent you from downgrading, because the stock ROM my S4 came with had a Knox-enabled bootloader, and the Knox flag was already tripped, yet I was still able to downgrade long enough to solve my issues.
"Kernel is not SEAndroid enforcing" on the splash screen is harmless. The bootloader detects the old ROM's kernel and notices that it doesn't have secure Android coding, so it warns you of this when you boot. If you can get the phone back to Android 4.4.2 or Android 5.0.1 the warning will go away.
Thanks for the clarification.
So I got the unlock code. However, I am not sure how to properly enter it. I'm following these instructions (Invalid SIM card screen, as nothing else seems to apply). Nothing happens when I enter the instructed codes. It's a manufacturer unlock code... surely it's not useless, is it?
Shouldn't be useless. Watch this YouTube video.
EDIT: If you repeatedly get a message that the unlock is unsuccessful, check out this YouTube video.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Shouldn't be useless. Watch this YouTube video.
EDIT: If you repeatedly get a message that the unlock is unsuccessful, check out this YouTube video.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never got a prompt like the one in the video.
I tried the procedure from the second video before, but I can't get into the UMTS main menu.
Then you have a different problem. The moment you put in the Bell or Telus SIM cards you should have gotten that prompt. Hate to say this, but I would have the phone serviced. Keep the unlock code however. You may as well use it when you get the S4 back.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Then you have a different problem. The moment you put in the Bell or Telus SIM cards you should have gotten that prompt. Hate to say this, but I would have the phone serviced. Keep the unlock code however. You may as well use it when you get the S4 back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK thanks for all your help, man.
So i successfully rooted my unlocked att version of the s5e.
everything was great until i popped my sim back in and the device wouldnt connect to att's network
im assuming thats it because the base os firmware was CDMA and not GSM so the bands i needed werent available.
i flashed another os i think its tmobile. no oem unlocking feature in the developer mode. im trying the trick to unlock it with not luck.
anyone have any advice?
So i figured something out. as ive been trying to flash different firmware.
it is now rejecting ALL Cdma firmware. and will only accept GSM firmware.
So after trying everything i finally just started trying every version of odin i could find. and finally found one that worked lol
Jobudden said:
So after trying everything i finally just started trying every version of odin i could find. and finally found one that worked lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps it will be helpful to others. Could you elaborate?
ok to start off i followed the steps from another post https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...908u1-versions.4400511/page-155#post-88289615
i didnt have lte data and i needed it; so i reflashed ATT's firmware. when i went to try to load the us cellular firmware again. it would fail at system. everytime. after flashing lots of firmwares to get it to oem unlock, i finally discovered that. it was only failing on any firmware that was CDMA related.
spent an entire day and had almost given up.
then i started trying to flash the us cellular with every odin version i could find. and finally odin v3.13.1 raymond patched odin worked.
but after finally getting it to root again. i still have to figure out a way to get lte data on ATT sim
and i now have data with AT&T by following these APN instructions from AT&T
Program Data Settings for Your Device
Can’t connect to the internet on your mobile device? Here’s how to set up the access point name (APN) to get you going again.
www.att.com
used the broadband for android section,
hope this helps someone else