Mobile Phone HELP please...

kennysarmy

kennysarmy

Yeah but can your army do this?
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Jeff
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Hi,

The background.

I bought a Samsung S3 off these forums back in October last year for my daughter.
We wanted a phone that was unlocked or on the O2 network (as we use Giff Gaff)

The person who we bought from claimed the phone was unlocked but requested EE unlock it and that it would take ten days and shipped the phone to us.
We waited the ten days and the phone did not accept our Giff Gaff sim so we ended up taking it to a shop to get it unlocked and the seller reimbursed us the unlocking costs.

All was fine until last week when the phone lost connection to the O2 network.

I thought my daughter had messed up the phone, but after trying all the settings and hitting some online forums I could not get it back on O2's network.

I checked the IMEI number through the software and on checking online found the phone was being identified as being lost/stolen or having been part of an insurance claim - hence it had become barred.

I also opened a call with Giff Gaff at the same time to find out what was going on - and provided them with the IMEI number from the phones software - to which they replied:

"hanks for getting in touch about your handset issue. I'm sorry to hear that you are having problems connecting, so here's what I've found at this end. I have checked your account and have talked it over with our technical team as well and can see that the IMEI number that you have provided does not match our records on your account for any handsets that have been used so far. Could you please get back to me with the make and model of the handset and just confirm again the IMEI number."

I've now checked under the battery and there is a completely different IMEI number there!

Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on?
 
Sounds like someone has done a switch with your daughters phone.
 
How was it unlocked. I know that if you use a jailbreak on an iPhone if you do an update it can reset it to the original supplier. not sure if samsung does the same thing
 
Sounds to me that the phone was not properly unlocked in first place.
When I researched into getting my S3 unlocked the only choices I had were to A)either pay T-Mobile £20 or B) use one of the third party companies (but it seems that all they do is get the unlock code from the relevant service provider then wack their charge on top.
It also seems that the shops / market stalls who unlock them do not do a permanent unlock and if you try to put a different sim in the phone it will be locked back to the previous one (I only read about this and not tried it).
Changine the IMEI code is illegal and it sound like this has happened to your daughters phone (perhaps done at the place who unlocked it?)
I don't think that there is anything you can do if the IMEI code doesn't match the one on label on the phone and the one on the providers database.
You may be able to question the shop who unlocked it about the proceedure they use but I doubt that will get you anywhere.
 
Maybe get in touch with the person you bought it from?
 
I think Darran is probably on the right track - I suspect the phone shop to have done something...

I've read that you can root your phone and reset the IMEI back to it's default (correct) one - but I'm not sure that will help me as presumably they took my IMEI to put on another phone!!!

p***ed off....
 
I've seen this time and time again, the typical market stalls that you see that unlock devices. The cheapest and quickest workaround is to perform an IMEI replacement, they use a select number that matches up as an unlocked handset from manufacturer but what happens is eventually that number will be assigned to a genuine OEM device which means the network then bar the handset that had the illegal IMEI, I guarantee if you find the original unlocker they will deny all knowledge that it was done!
 
Flightphoto said:
I've seen this time and time again, the typical market stalls that you see that unlock devices. The cheapest and quickest workaround is to perform an IMEI replacement, they use a select number that matches up as an unlocked handset from manufacturer but what happens is eventually that number will be assigned to a genuine OEM device which means the network then bar the handset that had the illegal IMEI, I guarantee if you find the original unlocker they will deny all knowledge that it was done!
Click to expand...

So the fix is?
 
Sorry Jeff, what I meant to say is if the phone hasn't defaulted, it will need the OEM IMEI to be reactivated. This is bloody typical of some market traders out for a quick buck. The network carrier method has always been the best and safest way to unlock a device as it's always recorded their end in the event of failure, I would ask the carrier if this option is still available, Market stalls use a generator much like the old Keygens which use the same algorithm to generate new IMEI's beginning with 3516 etc. I would suggest to anyone that if a carrier charges £20 compared to the £10 on the market - go with the genuine option
 
Flightphoto said:
Sorry Jeff, what I meant to say is if the phone hasn't defaulted, it will need the OEM IMEI to be reactivated. This is bloody typical of some market traders out for a quick buck. The network carrier method has always been the best and safest way to unlock a device as it's always recorded their end in the event of failure, I would ask the carrier if this option is still available, Market stalls use a generator much like the old Keygens which use the same algorithm to generate new IMEI's beginning with 3516 etc. I would suggest to anyone that if a carrier charges £20 compared to the £10 on the market - go with the genuine option
Click to expand...

Not sure I understand, but are you saying the original network carrier of the phone (Vodafone) can remotely unblock it (not unlock) and this can remotely reset the IMEI number back to the correct one for the phone? To me this seems unlikely....
 
Sorry buddy! To make it clearer, they won't unlock it, they can only unblock and remove the bar - you will need to root the handset and install the original OEM firmware and assign the IMEI to it, in a nutshell, you are in a real catch 22 and at this point I think the phone may be bricked unless you can find someone who has the option to completely re install the firmware on the device.
 
Flightphoto said:
Sorry buddy! To make it clearer, they won't unlock it, they can only unblock and remove the bar - you will need to root the handset and install the original OEM firmware and assign the IMEI to it, in a nutshell, you are in a real catch 22 and at this point I think the phone may be bricked unless you can find someone who has the option to completely re install the firmware on the device.
Click to expand...

I'm going to try and do that at the weekend....

I've found some online instructions about how to root the device and from their I should be able to edit the IMEI according to what I've read.

GIFFGAFF have confirmed that the proper IMEI number under the battery is not barred and once it's reset it should work again....

Lesson learnt though...don't get phones unlocked at shops....
 
Nevermind :) we've all made similar mistakes. I still can't believe Market traders break the rules that frequently for what should be a simple task!
 
Well I rooted the phone and tried a few different ways of editing the IMEI but none have worked.

I am currently re-downloading what I think is the stock ROM for this model of phone (locked to T-mobile) and I'm going to try re-installing that using something called ODIN!
I've nothing to lose as the phone is not working on the O2 network and present!
 
Odin is very easy to use, you just need the generic ROM that samsung released, it doesn't need to be carrier specific
 
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