Unlocking a mobile phone means that a mobile can be used with any compatible SIM card enabling you to take advantage of the best offers available in the market place. Having an unlocked phone has many benefits in terms of using SIM cards which have bonus offers, (for example Orange Wednesdays), as well as using different SIM cards when you are travelling abroad¬ in your existing handset. Unlocked phones can also be sold at a higher price on eBay.
Unlocking a phone is not illegal, unblocking a phone is illegal. The internet has revolutionised unlocking and there are now a range of websites which will provide detailed step-by-step instructions of how to do this – unlockitfree.com, unlock.nokiafree.org and trycktill.com/eng cover most Nokia phones.
You need to do 3 things to unlock your phone:
- Get your IMEI number by entering *#06# into your phone and noting the number that appears
- Entering your IMEI number into one of the above site to obtain a code
- Put the new SIM into your phone and enter the code [for ‘+’ press the * twice; for ‘p’ press * 3 times; for ‘w’ press * four times]
There are only five attempts available to unlock your phone so be careful when typing the code to ensure you don’t have to resort to paying for unlocking.
If there aren’t any codes available for your handset for free, codes can be purchased from specialist sites such as mrunlock.com and mobileunlocked.co.uk. The mobile networks will also unlock your phone but all the networks bar Virgin charge a premium for this service. If you are technology-savvy you can unlock via a data cable by downloading specialist software to your phone. Cable can be purchased from eBay.
