Advice - bricked iPhone

SexyGreyFox · 9 Apr 2011 at 10:10

My daughter bought an iPhone off her mate some time ago and had it unlocked to her Vodafone sim and all has been good for over a year.
This morning she decides to update the phone and now has an error message saying that Sim can't be activated etc.
I rang up the place who unlocked it and they said that there's nothing they can do at the moment until a new hack comes out.

What are her alternatives to get this phone working?
Can she buy a Tesco iPhone sim and will that work?

Any advice please.

godinman · 9 Apr 2011 at 10:32

I'm not sure really, but you could try the apple hardware section, guess they'd be more knowledgeable.

theron · 9 Apr 2011 at 10:35

afaik, you need to wait. the phone is locked to a specific sim card and unless u have that sim card it will not work until it is "jail broken"

its not usually long until a new hack comes out though so dont expect to wait for long.

Craig321 · 9 Apr 2011 at 10:36

dmpoole said:
My daughter bought an iPhone off her mate some time ago and had it unlocked to her Vodafone sim and all has been good for over a year.
This morning she decides to update the phone and now has an error message saying that Sim can't be activated etc.
I rang up the place who unlocked it and they said that there's nothing they can do at the moment until a new hack comes out.

What are her alternatives to get this phone working?
Can she buy a Tesco iPhone sim and will that work?

Any advice please.

You could take it to somewhere official, i.e. Vodafone and pay them to unlock, they will use the official method which doesn't break when updating.

Don't think there's any unlock out for the latest modem firmware (baseband) software

stokecity_m · 9 Apr 2011 at 10:40

You can roll back the phone to a earlier time so the update isn't on, it's quite hard to do though.

SexyGreyFox · 9 Apr 2011 at 11:14

OK thanks for the advice.
I'll wait until the jailbreak comes out and take it up our local phone shop who will do it for £10.
In the meantime I'm going to Hanley to buy a San Fransisco for her.

Craig321 · 9 Apr 2011 at 11:42

Why not just go to a Vodafone shop and ask how much they'll do it for? Orange do it for £20.

I would personally pay the extra money and have it permanently unlocked rather than relying on a jailbreak unlock!

Robbo · 9 Apr 2011 at 12:26

As has been said already (more or less) -

When your daughter bought the phone from her friend, it would have been Jailbroken and running UltraSn0w. UltraSn0w is a baseband unlock that well, unlocks the phone.

If you do an Apple firmware update, it wipes your Jailbreak and the baseband unlock.

You could just re-Jailbreak it with the 4.3.1 Jailbreak, easy enough to do, however, there is no new version of UltraSn0w out yet.

The only way to recover this is to use SHSH blobs to restore the phone to an earlier firmware, using a Mac. I doubt you have any of these, so just use a Tesco SIM (if that is what its locked to) for the time being.

Or, try and get the carrier to unlock it.

Deleted member 77746 · 9 Apr 2011 at 15:03

Just get a simcard that the phone was originally locked to, that will sort it out. PS 4.3.2 Ultrasn0w is coming out tonight.

PitteDeltRafe · 9 Apr 2011 at 19:12

Advice bricked iPhone

There have been no announcements regarding the iPhone 5, but I would expect it June/July time as always. I would say that Orange fed you a line to get you to sign up.

Wicksta · 9 Apr 2011 at 23:49

I've never seen a thread with the words 'bricked' and 'jailbreak' be so misused before.

SexyGreyFox · 9 Apr 2011 at 23:51

Wicksta said:
I've never seen a thread with the words 'bricked' and 'jailbreak' be so misused before.

So what would you do?

Wicksta · 10 Apr 2011 at 08:03

dmpoole said:
So what would you do?

Look to get the phone unlocked, either by the original operator or via other means.

Robbo · 10 Apr 2011 at 09:18

dmpoole said:
So what would you do?

http://www.redmondpie.com/unlock-ios-4.3.1-iphone-4-3gs-using-ultrasn0w-how-to-tutorial/

This.

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Apr 2011 at 09:26

Robbo said:
http://www.redmondpie.com/unlock-ios-4.3.1-iphone-4-3gs-using-ultrasn0w-how-to-tutorial/

This.

Was only released last night.

SexyGreyFox · 10 Apr 2011 at 11:18

Wicksta said:
Look to get the phone unlocked, either by the original operator or via other means.

No **** Sherlock, I think I already worked that one out.

So since you know so much by your reply above about the misuse of bricked and jailbreak how EXACTLY would you do it?

Robbo said:
http://www.redmondpie.com/unlock-ios-4.3.1-iphone-4-3gs-using-ultrasn0w-how-to-tutorial/

This.

At last

SexyGreyFox · 10 Apr 2011 at 12:11

iDroid84 said:
Was only released last night.

My major problem here is that the phone is stuck at the screen which shows the USB cable & iPhone symbol and when I slide it shows the emergency phone pad.
When connected to iTunes I get the Sim Card error message and even though I've downloaded a wad of IPSW restore files there is no way I can restore, I have no option.