Hi All,
I recently purchased this phone while on a trip to the US as a cheap method to have data and use it for it's GPS, etc. I'd like to use it in Canada, but doing that requires it to be unlocked, and Tracphone's unlock policy is that it must be on their network for a year.
From what I have seen, paid unlock services don't support tracphone. What are my options for getting this phone unlocked? I'm ok with rooting and pulling files through ADB if needed.
Thanks, Ivan
There is another thread about root support for this phone here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-j3-2016/help/sm-s327vl-root-support-t3662669/
I have this phone and I doubt they will figure a way to root it. As for unlocking to use on another network or carrier, the policy is that way with Tracfone. You have to wait, since the paid services will not unlock it for you. I could be wrong.
I bought this phone because I thought I was only getting a certain amount for a phone. I was impatient and had family buy it early for me thinking this certain amount on a check I was getting. After buying went through hell with Tracfone, after getting phone and the screen flickered and had vertical lines going through it and had to do a RMA with them, from June 14th to around middle of July, in about a month wait.
By the time of the 2nd week of waiting for the RMA and new phone. I got the check I was waiting for and it was $224. I was thinking before I bought this phone online off of Tracfone website, that I wanted to buy a unlocked phone from Best Buy. The Motorola G4 Play. With the amount I would of got and did not know until too late, I regret not doing the other way.
I could of got a 32gb internal unlocked phone with fingerprint scanner. Oh well, my mistake, and with the 4 week hassle I dealt with Tracfone in getting a replacement. I will never ever buy another phone off their website. Really, bad customer service. If I had a better budget and more options, then I would go with another network.
Any Solution to unlock network on the s320vl?
Related
hey, i don't want to wait for the release in europe so i wanna buy one on ebay.com. I found pretty much of the devices on ebay.com. there is often said that the devices has bad esn's and can't not be activated in the verizon network. what is this about?
they say the phone is unlocked but only outside the us. can i buy such a phone or not?
I purchased a Droid Pro two weeks ago on Ebay which just arrived last Friday and I am already very much in love with this phone.
I guess the best option is to get in touch with the seller directly. The best case scenario you can go for is to buy it from a private seller who has a good standing with Verizon. My seller helped out a lot to activate the device, and then call up Verizon to get an official unlock code for me that I just had to enter after popping in my sim card and which worked perfectly! Bad ESN means that it can not be activated on the Verizon network. However, in order to do the unlock the usual way, the device needs to be activated once and that MUST be on the Verizon US network, it is not possible anywhere else. If you do a google search you will find a way to get around the activation by a simple "touch all the corners of the screen trick".. but I am not sure how reliable that is and what happens after you do an update. In case you can not get an official Verizon unlock code, they are available on the internet. However, if you check the other forums, increasingly more online unlock codes have no effect as Verizon is starting to change the databases OTA (over-the-air) on the devices.. and I am not sure whether the developers have caught up with it yet.
Also something you want to be careful about, try to find out how the device performs on your network. Because there are also reports that some users are not able to use their phones with their home 3G networks, even after manually putting in the APN infos. I am sure that will sort itself out as soon as the Motorola Pro officially hits Europe...
Also just to give you a figure of what price you can expect.. I paid $300 for mine activated and supplied with an official Verizon unlock code, oh the seller was so kind to include a 16GB microSD card... I have the feeling this device is getting more and more popular in Europe which might have an impact on the prices on Ebay..
If theres anything else I can help you with, please feel free. I know of at least a handful users from Europe and Asia that have imported Droid Pros so the combined knowledge should be sufficient to help you out Where are you based?
thank you for this great reply. ok i tried out to find some private seller on ebay.com. when this doesn't work i think i will buy such a bad esn phone and give it a try. when you have contact to your seller please let me know. then i can contact him if he sell some more of the devices.
best regards from germany
There is an update of unlock code by Verizon over OTA in end of Jan or begin of Feb for sure, and the unlock code has been changed. But it seems new unlock code provider (not from verizon) pop on web site/ebay.
I just bid one bad esn droid pro from ebay and waiting happily
Hi @vivid i sent a PM to you. Please reply.
So, I got this phone from a friend of mine (I'm from Brazil, he lives in US), but it's not eligible for unlock, and I don't know why. I checked the IMEI and it's alright, and I'm pretty sure the phone should be eligible. The thing is I can't contact my friend right now (and dafuq is wrong with TMO? Don't they have a contact email or something like that?), this guy is quite illiterate, technologically speaking, there's no TMO SIM card here and no TMO account access.
What should I do to get in touch with T-Mobile? Any other way to unlock the S7 Edge, besides those ebay services? I tried two methods from the guide section, but didn't succeed (even got a boot screen freeze from one of them).
Ir happens the same to me, i from México and my family send me the phone, to unlocked, i use a web page, called doctor SIM is this, https://www.doctorsim.com/ ir cost me around 30 dollars and in one day it was unlocked
Hello,
I recently saw the (samsung.com) Buy One Get One (/us/mobile/phones/t-mobile-free-galaxy-s8-promotion) deal on the Samsung S8. I am really interested. The deal applies on buying the T-Mobile variants directly from samsung.com. (Not through T-Mobile)
However, I am from India, and am currently travelling to the US. I would like to buy both the phones and get them unlocked later so that I can use them back in India. I do not mind buying/activating a new T-Mobile line on one of the phones as long as I can SIM unlock the phone later for use with other SIMs. From what I read, T-Mobile does not have these phones registered in their database and it is difficult to get them to unlock the phone for me. What usually ends up happening is that Samsung people redirect to T-Mobile, who in turn redirect back to Samsung. Has anybody had any success?
Here are a couple of reddit threads dealing with the same matter (can't post links yet, sorry) :
/r/tmobile/comments/68w6ow/samsungcom_tmobile_s8_sim_unlock/
/r/tmobile/comments/6crs6v/unlocking_samsung_galaxy_purchased_from_samsungcom/
/r/GalaxyS8/comments/67a942/how_to_get_sim_unlock_code_for_phones_purchased/
Please let me know if this is possible, and how it can be done.
I have T-mo phone bought and paid in full direct from Samsung and I can confirm this nonsense, which should be totally illegal: T-mo has no record of my phone's IMEI and Samsung can't unlock the phone without T-mo. You could try paid services, but I have no idea how well and if they even work. You could also wait for root and probably unlock then, but it's risky. So far I have not been able to resolve this issue.
pete4k said:
I have T-mo phone bought and paid in full direct from Samsung and I can confirm this nonsense, which should be totally illegal: T-mo has no record of my phone's IMEI and Samsung can't unlock the phone without T-mo. You could try paid services, but I have no idea how well and if they even work. You could also wait for root and probably unlock then, but it's risky. So far I have not been able to resolve this issue.
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That's sad to hear. I would have loved to get the phone using this offer. From what I gathered from the reddit threads, you basically have to grind down on customer support (either Samsung or T-Mobile) to get it unlocked from their side.
Hey all I'm new at all this and I'm trying to unlock or root my T-Mobile LG V20. I've never done any of this stuff, but I want to be able to use this phone on a network other than T-Mobile. Can anyone give this rookie ( me) some help?
T-Mobile won't unlock it for me. The day there is a balance owed on it. And when I tried the unlock app. It say failure in processing the request. Please reboot and try again.. If you can walk me through this it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!
It's a h91810t
Please help if you can. If you need to look at my phone via computer I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done.
Does no one know how to help me? I just want to be able to either fix it So I can get it unlocked or root it if possible so I can get it to work outside my house. Please help!
Network unlock is different from root or system unlock. You'll need to work with T-Mobile to network unlock to use the phone on another network. There may be other resources on the internet, but I don't know if they work.
T-Mobile will not unlock it for me. There is a balance due from the previous owner and they refuse to help. I've ask some of these 3 party people and either they don't do the phones with the device unlock app. or they say they can't unlock it because the message I get when I click permanent unlock which is failure in processing the request. Please reboot and try again. And I did a little research on that and people were being told to check they're memory on the device. That it may be using too much memory or too many app's. Not sure which one. But I did a factory reset as well as looked to see how much ram was being used, before and after. And it's only using 1.7 gigs of the 4 gigs of ram it has. And 19.62 gigs of storage of the 94 gigs it can take. So I don't know what I can do to get rid of the message and get the right one. I thought that maybe someone has figured a way to fix it or get around it. Thanks for the response though. Can you maybe point me in the right direction? See I'm on permanent disability and don't get much from social security and I can't afford to pay the people that want over $40 to unlock it and I've asked some of the higher priced ones but was afraid to ask the people who want over $100. I can't afford it. My small check pays for me and my wife to survive in this dump of a state CA ( thanks to Jerry Brown ). Anyways if someone can help it would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
motormadness said:
T-Mobile will not unlock it for me. There is a balance due from the previous owner and they refuse to help.
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Honestly you should try to return it and get your money back from the previous owner if they won't immediately pay it off so it can be network unlocked. If the old owner stops paying T-Mobile for it and since he no longer has the phone T-Mobile could flat out blacklist it as basically a stolen phone from ever working on any network.
Also the unlock app checks with T-Mobile if it's paid off and otherwise in good condition to be unlocked as well.
I bought it from a pawnshop and all sales are final. They won't take it back and they won't give me any information on the previous owner. So I don't know what to do. Oh well I guess I waisted $150.00 on a piece of junk I can't use. Thanks!
"Oh well I guess I waisted $150.00"
Yes you did. If there is money owed on the phone, then the IMEI is blacklisted, and unless you were planning on using it outside of the USA, then that blacklist is shared with all the major carriers.
$150 is a good deal even now as long as the phone is in good condition. Why don't you pay off the balance? It won't be as good a deal, but a mint condition H918 is still going for between $350 and $400 bucks.
Anytime you buy a phone used that has no return policy, always check the IMEI.
Oh, lastly, yes you can root it, and then you can SIM unlock it -- but again, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile (obviously), nor any of their MVNOs will activate it while it is blacklisted.
-- Brian
There's a unlocked method but it requires root
As far as I know, the only way to network unlock it is with the tmo app. And it doesn't work on a rooted phone. I tried.
Did the pawn shop sell as unlocked?
If the pawn shop says all sales final, then I'd assume it's final. I wouldn't expect one to make any exceptions at all.
What is the physical condition of the phone? If it's in excellent condition, I would just settle for getting most of your money back by reselling it on eBay for $125-150. Many recent completed auctions for a bad IMEI H918 in good shape have gone for $130-140.
Hi,
has anyone used the BYOD one year of free service on sprint? I'm currently with USmobile, and apparently that makes me eligible for this plan. That'd basically pay for the phone in savings, which sounds great, but I'm wondering if anyone else has used it? Anything that one would have to take into account taking the unlocked Essential Phone to Sprint?
i have the bYOD free year using sprint and now with the essential phone. I switched over from my pixel.
I am however getting a terrible signal and non existent 4g speeds, currently researching to see if i can do anything about this! Right now, i wish i had my pixel still...
i did byod with an essential phone... and it must have relocked it. when going into settings to unlock (while on the free plan and after waiting the required time frame) it would not unlock. i tried contacting customer support and it said it could only be unlocked by the original owner. then after more back and forth said it was already unlocked. so what i determined was putting it back on sprint RE-locked it, but their system was so messy that it showed it as unlocked.
x000x said:
i did byod with an essential phone... and it must have relocked it. when going into settings to unlock (while on the free plan and after waiting the required time frame) it would not unlock. i tried contacting customer support and it said it could only be unlocked by the original owner. then after more back and forth said it was already unlocked. so what i determined was putting it back on sprint RE-locked it, but their system was so messy that it showed it as unlocked.
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Yikes, that's some ****ed up ****... I'm on the sprint plan now, how do I figure out whether they locked my phone? Also, how is that even possible, wth?
dsip said:
Yikes, that's some ****ed up ****... I'm on the sprint plan now, how do I figure out whether they locked my phone? Also, how is that even possible, wth?
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there was a sale, sprint was selling them for $150, and you could pay it off early, unlock them and leave sprint. a lot of people did that, and then later sprint changed the terms of having to wait x amount of days to unlock them. my first one was probably one of these (got it off ebay). It might only involve those that were sold at that greatly discounted price. easiest way to tell if it is still unlocked is to put a different carrier sim and see what happens, otherwise look for something called uicc unlock. i think if it is relocked you have to wait 45 days to unlock it. I eventually gave up asking sprint customer support, and just did this https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=75994498&postcount=360 to unlock it