Unlocking your Cellular Phone Methods

Thursday, May 04, 2006

There are two ways in which a cellular phone can be unlocked. One method of unlocking is particularly simple and easy to do and can be done from home where as another cellular phone unlocking method requires specialist equipment meaning that you usually need to pay someone to do it for you.

The first, and generally more common is where you unlock the cellular phone by entering a secret code into it. The code is most often a unique number which is preprogrammed into the phone and based on the serial number (or IMEI number). You must provide the IMEI number of your cellular phone in order to unlock it. This is usually found on the battery or by entering a code number into your cellular phone (the second being more reliable since batteries can be swapped between cellular phones). This type of cellular unlocking can be done over the internet by providing your cell phone model and IMEI number to a cellular unlocking service website. This is often as cheap as $5.

The second method is more complicated. The actual cell phone firmware needs to be patched, hacked or rewritten to allow the phone to be unlocked. For this type of unlocking to be done the cellular phone needs to be connected to a programming unit or PC via a data cable. You can buy the programming unit and data cable but a cheaper option is usually to have a local cellular phone store do it for you. This type of cellular phone unlocking is more common with advanced Motorola, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Treo models.