Q: Invalid Sim?

Contact your Carrier.

Hi, I'm having exactly the same problem with my I-Phone 5, did you ever find a solution?

Where did you get the phone? That's symptomatic of a phone that was hacked or jailbroken to unlock it, then restored or updated.

Hi KiltedTim,

I bought the phone on e-Bay. The seller had great feedback, seemed legitimate and has been helping me to try and resolve these matters. I think if they were a criminal they wouldn't be stupid enough to sell things on e-Bay as clearly the police can track them through there. They sold the phone knowing that it was locked to Orange and I bought it, thinking it would be easy to get it unlocked. I spent £70 getting the phone unlocked by a perfectly legal third-party and it didn't work. Have you got any ideas?

Thanks

If the phone is locked to Orange, then the only people who can unlock the phone are Orange.

Of course a third party unlock will not work on your phone because what they do to unlock the phone amounts to hacking/jailbreaking it, which leaves the phone open to malware, it also voids any warranty that you might have on the phone and once you update the phone, it will revert to being carrier locked again, so you are back to square one.

You have wasted £70 on getting someone to hack your phone and it still will not work when you could have just gone to Orange and they might have unlocked the phone for you for free and if Orange unlock it, it will stay unlocked.

Unfortunately, you purchased that phone from E-Bay with the full knowledge of it being locked to Orange - so if it is locked to Orange, it is easy to get it unlocked by going to Orange itself.  Either this, or you need to talk to the seller and see if they are willing to approach Orange and have the phone legitimately unlocked so that you can use it.  If they are a good seller on E-Bay and they were the last person to have owner the phone, then they should help you.

However - again - if the phone is locked to Orange, then only Orange can unlocked it for you and anything else amounts to hacking.

NicoXabier wrote:

 

I spent £70 getting the phone unlocked by a perfectly legal third-party and it didn't work.

ONLY the carrier it's locked to can legitimately authorize unlocking it. I don't know if it's illegal there or not for you or a 3rd party to hack it to unlock it, but whether it is or not is irrelevant.

If the hack you paid for involved someone actually touching your phone and attempting to modify the firmware, then you may or may not be able to get it legitimately unlocked.

If they just took your money and laughed at you, then you should be OK, provided the original owner had not hacked or jailbroken the phone previously.