Unlocking 02 Contract Phone

Bennie-Mac

Bennie-Mac

Bennie-Mac

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Joined
10 Sep 2008
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Bangor, Northern Ireland
Hi all :)

My Mum's contract with O2 is up in the next week, and they have offered her a discount to stay with them as she was thinking of moving to Vodafone. The problem is she is more than happy with her current phone, so has offered me her new handset, however with me being on Vodafone there is the issue of the new phone being locked to O2.

Most likely I will be going for either a Samsung Galaxy S2 or an HTC Sensation, can these be unlocked easily and how would I go about getting this done? I dont mind paying for the privilege but if there are any free ways it would obviously be better. Never had to do this before so any advice is appreciated.

Cheers :)
 
If you root the Galaxy S II I believe you can unlock it for free.

The Sensation is £15-20 depending on where you get it done (perhaps less). Or you can just call O2 and they may do it free, it depends.

All in all, it'll be easy, nothing to worry about.
 
Pretty sure Robbo is right about the SII. I've seen unlocking guides for it (I'm on o2 with the SII atm so I've not attempted to unlock).
 
Cheers guys, my mum said that the O2 salesman said that they couldnt be unlocked until after 1 year, but I assume that was O2 unlocking it directly. As long as it can be done im happy :)

Can the Sensation not be rooted now? I thought that HTC had enabled it recently?
 
Just thought I'd confirm that the SGS2 can be unlocked by you for free.

All you have to do is root the phone (which it sounds like you'd do anyways since you asked about the HTC being rootable) then download an app off the market called "[root] galaxy s2 sim unlock" made by Chainfire.

It runs for about 5 mins or so then gives you your unlock code.

If you get the SGS2 and are rooting it anyways I'd just use this method instead of going through o2 as it'll likely be easier and quicker.

I have no idea about unlocking the Sensation, I'd imagine if what DirtyRaver said is true it'd be easiest/cheapest just getting o2 to do it :).

It's nice that they've stopped charging to unlock phones, my step-brother wanted his x10 mini unlocked and they wanted to charge him (can't remember what he did in the end now) £20 iirc, although that may have been because it was a PAYG phone, rather than a contract, and obviously ot meant that o2 weren't going to make any money on it.
 
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5punk3monk3y said:
Had a galaxy 2 02 handset on the weekend via upgrade I will bang an old oranage sim in it tomorrow and let you know.
Click to expand...

If you have your phone rooted you may aswell download the app I mentioned in my last post and unlock it while the other SIM is in (if it turns out to be locked).

Saves you having to remember to do before you sell it, or if your SIM gets lost/broke/whatever and you need to use another network for a few days while waiting on replacement :).

If you're not already rooted then just ignore me :).

Oh, and if anyone sees this or my last post about the unlock code app, when you put the code in (it says this in the details of it, but not everyone reads that I guess) it might say that the code has failed, try restarting the phone anyways as sometimes it works anyways.

You should also only try the code once so make sure you put it in correctly, as although you can get the proper phone unlock code for inputting the SIM unlock code in wrong too many times (3?) if it got the wrong key for SIM unlock I wouldn't want to trust it getting the phone unlock code correct :p.

Actually, writing this post has reminded me that I still need to find/borrow a SIM card from another network and see if mines locked or not, as I've already ran the app and got my unlock code.

*goes and looks for that o2 SIM card I used for my last phone*

Edit - Just thought I may aswell update this post, my orange SGS2 was network locked, just tried the code that the unlock app I mentioned gave me when I originally rooted my phone, it worked fine, so now my phone is open to any network if needed :).
 
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