Here's our comprehensive unlock service
for most GSM type cellphones
If you have a GSM cell
phone (such as sold by AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, and by
most wireless companies everywhere else in the world) the
chances are that it is currently restricted ('locked') to
only work with the service provider you bought it from.
But if you unlock your
phone you can then use it with any other GSM service -
potentially saving you substantial money, especially if
traveling internationally.
Most GSM cell phones can be
quickly and simply unlocked - all you need do is enter a
short code into the phone via its keypad.
We can send you the unlock
codes for most phones. In cases where the phone needs to be
unlocked via special equipment, you can usually send the phone
to us and we'll unlock it for you.
Our service has been offered
since 2003, and our website has been online since 2001. In
choosing The Travel Insider, you're choosing a stable reputable
experienced source of unlocking codes and services.
This page (and the related other
pages linked to it) tells you everything
you ever wanted to know about unlocking your phone, and then
lists all the different phones we can unlock (well over a
thousand so far, and growing all the time) for you to select
your phone from and then move forward to ordering a specific
code for that phone.
Why Unlock Your Phone
There are two main reasons
you would choose to unlock their phone.
Changing Service Providers
Firstly, to change service
provider in your home country, without needing to buy a new
phone from the new wireless service provider.
With 'number
portability' you can keep your cell phone number when changing from one
service provider to another, and now, if you unlock your phone,
you can keep your same phone, too, complete with all its
programmed phone numbers, stored photos, etc.
Traveling Internationally
Secondly, if you are
traveling out of your home country, you'll usually find the
charges levied by your home country wireless company are very
high for international roaming.
There are much better ways to
use your phone when traveling internationally - either using an
international roaming service and SIM, which gives you moderate
costs for making and receiving calls and the most convenient
solution, or using a specific service and SIM for each country
you visit, which gives you the lowest cost per country if you'll
be staying in a country for a reasonable period and
making/receiving a significant number of calls (see our articles
listed in the top right for reviews and discussion on your
various options).
You'll need your phone to be unlocked in
order to use SIMs in it from other companies (than the company
you bought the phone from in the first place).
Over the years, both GSM
cell phone locking technologies and the methods used to unlock
them have become simultaneously more sophisticated and also,
sometimes, more simple (in terms of applying an unlock to your
phone).
Nowadays we often find
ourselves with multiple different ways of unlocking your phone.
That's the good news. The, ahem, other news is that
sometimes some of these methods work better than others and
sometimes none of them work at all.
:) That's where our expertise strongly comes in to play.
The best news of all is that
the former requirement to send most phones in to us to be
unlocked is now largely no longer in force. Most of the
time you can unlock the phone yourself, usually by simply
keying in a short unlock code, or sometimes by running some
software on your computer and connected to your phone via its
data connecting cable.
We're created this
comprehensive listing of phones and unlock options here in an
attempt to try and accurately advise you of how each and every
different phone can be unlocked.
But - new model phones come
out all the time (as do new versions of firmware for current
model phones), and so this list will always be slightly
incomplete, never 100% accurate, and somewhat out of date. If you're looking for a model
phone that isn't on our list,
please email us so we can check to see if we can unlock your
phone for you, and of course, if we can, we'll quickly add it to
the list for you.
The US operates two main
types of cell phone service; one known as GSM (which is the main
service used almost everywhere else in the world) and the other
known as CDMA
(which is not found in many other countries).
The 'under the hood'
differences are unimportant when it comes to making and
receiving calls, but only GSM phones can be unlocked.
In the US, both AT&T and
T-Mobile, as well as a few much smaller companies like Suncom,
use GSM type phones. Other major companies such as Sprint
and Verizon use CDMA (although they'll sometimes sell dual-mode
'international' phones that might combine both CDMA and GSM
features). Nextel uses an oddball type of service (iDEN)
that can not be unlocked.
To determine if your phone
is unlockable or not, choose the make and model of the phone
from the table below and see what your unlock options may be.
Note that if your make/model phone do not appear,
please do
check with us to see if we can indeed unlock it, but haven't
yet added it to the list.
Is Your Phone Already Unlocked?
Nearly all phones are sold
in a locked state, such that they will only work with SIMs from
the wireless company you bought the phone from. So your
phone is unlikely to be already unlocked.
Note also that some phones,
sold as 'unlocked', are not truly unlocked. The person
selling the phone is not necessarily being dishonest, but simply
doesn't understand what the term means.
There's an easy way to test
to see if your phone is unlocked or not. Simply put a
different SIM from a different wireless company in the phone to
see if it will work or not. In the case of the US, you'd
want to put either a T-Mobile or AT&T SIM into the phone - the
opposite of the SIM it already works with (borrow the SIM from a
friend's phone for the minute it will take you to check), or, of
course, you can also any other SIM you might be able to borrow from someone
as well.
If the phone is unlocked,
you'll be able to make and receive calls with the different SIM
in it. If it is not unlocked, you'll get an error message,
and/or you won't get signal, and/or the phone will request you to enter
an unlock code.
Will Your Phone Work
Internationally?
If you're unlocking your
phone so as to use it in other countries, you need to be sure
that your phone supports the frequency bands used by the other
countries you'll be visiting. Most countries use either or
both 900 MHz and/or 1800 MHz, but some countries (ie the US) use
either or both 850 MHz and/or 1900 MHz.
Look up your phone
specifications to see which frequency bands the phone supports,
and compare that to the
frequencies
used in the country you'll visit. If the phone has the
same frequency band or bands as the country, then it will
obviously be able to work there.
If a country has two
frequency bands and your phone has only one of the two bands,
the phone will work most of the time in most places, but not all
of the time in all places.
You'll sometimes see, in the
fine print of your service contract with your phone company,
wording that in some way attempts to restrict you from unlocking
your phone.
Although there may be some
contractual restrictions on unlocking your phone, the twin
realities are that the phone companies generally can't
tell if your phone is locked or not, and neither do they really
care (indeed, we get a lot of referral business direct from the
wireless companies themselves - thanks, guys!).
It is possible that if you
had a warranty claim on your phone and if anyone should then
test to see if it is unlocked, that might void your warranty.
Other than that, there's not a lot of downside to unlocking your
phone.
As for the underlying
legality, the Librarian of Congress (the person charged with
determining the legality of things like this, believe it or not)
ruled in 2007 that phone unlocking was not contravening the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so it seems that unlocking
your phone is perfectly
legal. It is, after all, your phone!
How Does the Unlocking Process
Work - Costs, Leadtimes, etc?
This is really easy.
You simply choose the make and model of your phone,
below.
Choose the appropriate
link from the selection that appears after selecting your phone
make/model, and the next page
will present you with pricing information and options.
Choose the service and
options you want, tell us your phone's IMEI (we tell you how to
find it) then click over to make a credit card payment via
Paypal.
Lastly, wait for us to send
you back your unlock code (if you've chosen a remote code
option) or then send the phone to us (if you've chosen to mail
the phone in - you'll be taken to a page with detailed
instructions on where/how to do this).
The cost of the unlock
service ranges from a low of $5 (for older model Nokias) through
a general range of about $25-$40 for remote unlock codes for
most phones, and ranging up above that for some special phone
models. Exact pricing is provided when you click the link
through to your particular make/model of phone.
Perhaps surprisingly, if you want to
send the phone to us and have us unlock it for you instead, that
may
costs more than getting a remote unlock code from us (to cover
our extra costs of receiving, unlocking, packing, and mailing
the phone back to you). However, sometimes the cost is the
same or even less - this will be shown to you when you have
selected your phone from the options below.
It will take us anywhere
from less than half a business day through to several business
days to generate the unlock code for you and to send it back
(some model phones take longer to get a code for than others).
And if you mail the phone to us, we have a same day return or a
next day return service (the same day service costs $5 more than
the next day service). Again, these options will be
explained on the next page.
Do You Guarantee Your Unlocking
Service?
Absolutely! We'll
either unlock your phone or fully refund you the fee we charged.
This is easy when we're
unlocking your phone, in person, ourselves, because we
thoroughly test every phone before returning it to you and
therefore know if it has been successfully unlocked or not.
If you buy
a remote code from us, and in the very rare situation where the
code doesn't work, we ask you to send the phone to us so we can
unlock it, either via the code supplied or via a different
method. If we too can't unlock it, we'll return your phone
to you via priority mail and fully refund the fee you originally
paid.
Thousands of Satisfied
Customers
In the six years we've been
in business, we've unlocked phones for thousands of happy
customers - in some cases, we've unlocked multiple phones for
people.
1. Tracfones and Net10
phones are not
true GSM phones. We can not unlock these types of phone accordingly,
and even if unlocked, they are not likely to work with other
SIMs.
2. Related comment -
if you want to use a Tracfone or Net10 SIM in another GSM phone, this is
unlikely to be successful.
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