|
Since Apple launched the iPhone millions and millions of people have purchased one of the models (or often each subsequent model) and all iPhones are locked into either the AT&T network in the USA or 02 in the UK. Many people want to unlock their iphone as if you are planning a trip abroad you do not want to be stuck with the large roaming charges of your network and often much cheaper and easier to buy a local SIM card. Or maybe you just want to take advantage of the promotions other networks like Orange or Vodaphone offer. Over the years several groups and websites have announced they have ways to unlock iphones so it can use any SIM card from any provider. Some of the hacks are free, while others are sold for small amounts. However, please note that certain features may only work with the original network and of course if you move from that network, you will no longer receive support from their technical department and unlocking your phone could invalidate your iphone warranty. There are two different types of unlocking - software unlocking where you download a small piece of software and hardware unlocking, where you make a modification to the actual phone. Software unlocks are much safer as they can be reversed and tend to be freely available, where as hardware unlocking is harder and costs much more. Wikipedia states that unlocking a phone without the provider's permission is in breach of the user agreement, but most countries do not have any specific laws preventing the removal of SIM card locking. Before you can unlock your iphone, you need to jailbreak it. This is a term for modifying your iphone so it can use third party applications not approved by Apple. The unlocking can then be done from a computer or directly from the iphone. Here is a quick guide as to one way to unlock an iphone. You need to jailbreak it first and then you can use Cydia and find "UltraSn0w" and download it and install it and reboot your phone and it should be installed. Please take care as this unlocking method only works with phones on a certain baseband. However, this method only works on original iphones and not upgraded versions as when you upgrade you change the baseband and the higher versions are proving more difficult to unlock. Attempting to revert the phone to the old version does not work as it does not restore the bandwidth. There is some hope though. For those with contracts that have run out with 02 for example, you can simply ask 02 to unlock iphone for you. They will also unlock phones still within a contract although you still have to honour the contract and pay the monthly fee. This means you can buy an iphone, then a 02 SIM card, put on some credit and then ask them to unlock it. You'll get a message in a few days to say it has been unlocked. If putting in another provider's SIm card gives you an invalid message, you need to connect your iphone to your computer, open itunes and reboot the iphone.
Related Articles -
iphone, iphone 4, unlock iphone 4,
| 
