Girl at work bought an iPhone 3GS locked to Orange from someone she knows at work, stupidly I said that I would unlock it for her based on having unlocked my iPhone 2G (yes, they still exist!) way back when. She was chuffed as she thought she'd have to take it to a shop.
Anyway it wasn't until I had it in my hands and started actually doing some up-to-date research that I found out that it seems Apple basically won the war and that the latest basebands are non-unlockable? Her phone is on 4.3.3 and has baseband 05.16.02, I'm guessing the guy who sold it to her just did a factory reset or restore?
From the research I've done it seems the only way to unlock this phone is by installing the baseband from an iPad (06.15.00), which renders the GPS inoperable and stops you doing any future iOS update to the phone through iTunes (this isn't such a big deal I guess, but I can imagine it might be in the future).
I'm not particularly keen on flashing someone elses phone with the iPad baseband and losing GPS, maybe more, to be honest.
Would Orange unlock the phone given just the IMEI, even for a small fee? It must surely be well outside contract by now (it looks fairly old)
Anyway it wasn't until I had it in my hands and started actually doing some up-to-date research that I found out that it seems Apple basically won the war and that the latest basebands are non-unlockable? Her phone is on 4.3.3 and has baseband 05.16.02, I'm guessing the guy who sold it to her just did a factory reset or restore?
From the research I've done it seems the only way to unlock this phone is by installing the baseband from an iPad (06.15.00), which renders the GPS inoperable and stops you doing any future iOS update to the phone through iTunes (this isn't such a big deal I guess, but I can imagine it might be in the future).
I'm not particularly keen on flashing someone elses phone with the iPad baseband and losing GPS, maybe more, to be honest.
Would Orange unlock the phone given just the IMEI, even for a small fee? It must surely be well outside contract by now (it looks fairly old)
