Apple-unlocked iPhone became locked suddenly!!

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Level 2

279 points

Apple-unlocked iPhone became locked suddenly!!

I have an Apple-unlocked iPhone 3GS which I bought in Australia 2 years ago. It's always worked fine with various SIMs and varuious carriers - I travel a lot so unlocked was my chocie as I use SIMs in each country I visit. Recently in UK, I bought and installed a prepaid (pay as you go) SIM while I was there and now I find the phone is locked to that carrier. Well, at least it will not make calls - it'll recieve calls and it'll send and recieve SMS messages, but I can't make any calls - it just begins the calling process then gives call failed message. Now I find the problem, I've moved on to another country so getting the carrier to see to it is impossible for me. So now I have a locked phone because somehow a carrier has been able to disable the factory unlock by using their SIM I installed. This is a carrier I have not used before with this phone.

Amazing... how can that happen? How can a carrier have that sort of power over the device???

Can anyone tell me what's happened here? How can I get back to the original unlocked state?

I've tried a total Restore, but no change - still locked.

Thank you in advance for any help offered.

MacBook Pro 3.02 GHz, 15, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 8GB RAM, 3 iPods, iPhone 3GS, iPad

Posted on Jun 14, 2012 11:28 PM

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Answer 1

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PaulWR Author

Level 2

279 points

Jun 19, 2012 7:18 PM in response to PaulWR

Okay I found the fix. Firstly it was not actually locked - I realised it couldn't be since it was still receiving calls and sending/receiving texts. Locked would give the SIM warning at the unlock screen.

So... eventually, Restored the phone and set up as a new iPhone instead of from backup. No more problem. Must have been corrupt backup files, so deleted all those from my Mac and have started from scratch with the new setup.

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