Hi everyone,
Sorry I'm a newbie here and I'm hoping that I came into the right place to post this question. I badly need some advice.
Let me introduce myself, I am from Thailand and just a student. I know all my life I wanted that Samsung Galaxy S 2 android phone but it seems I can't make it to that real amount of money. So, from thinking too much I came with a plan to buy a phone there in US, those with contracts because they are much cheaper (please correct me if I'm wrong). And let my friend carry with him when he got back into our place. Please be guided that he's on the US now and am planning to be back on November so I got plenty of time to save and buy it.
My question is.
1. Is it possible to buy online from those carriers like AT&T, Sprint and etc considering I am from Thailand?
2. If the answer to question no. 1 is yes, I'm thinking that I will have a locked phone meaning I can't use it with other GSM (other SIM). So can I unlock it?
3. I heard some things like "Flashing Custom ROM". Is it okay? Will it unlock for phone if you do that?
I know my motives aren't so good but this is the only way I think is the best. Thanks a lot guys! Have a good day everyone.
Best Regards,
Paolo
galangdj said:
Is it possible to buy online from those carriers like AT&T, Sprint and etc considering I am from Thailand?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No.
10char
galangdj said:
1. Is it possible to buy online from those carriers like AT&T, Sprint and etc considering I am from Thailand?
2. If the answer to question no. 1 is yes, I'm thinking that I will have a locked phone meaning I can't use it with other GSM (other SIM). So can I unlock it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just as WierdPirate mentioned above, it is( unfortunately for you) not possible to that.
Why?
First of all, for you to get the Galaxy S II, you need to sign a contract. For you to personally do that you must:
a) Be a legal U.S Resident
b) Be at least 18 Years Old
c) Have a valid U.S Address
Be aware of the following, even if you do manage to do acquire one in some way:
The device may come cheap but you sign a two year contract with the carrier in question, another hurdle to overcome.
There may be ways to avoid sales taxes, but that won't compensate for it not working outside the US.
Hope this helps.
I'm in a bit of a situation. I live in Canada. I leave to the US and Poland in about 17 hours on a two month trip. I have spent the better part of two weeks trying to unlock my iPhone to no avail. I now need a phone. I have turned to my city's classified adds where there are several android phones for sale. My issue is this: I am fast approaching the point at which I will no longer be able to meet someone to buy a phone today, but I don't know what I need.
I am aware that the answer to my question is out there on the intersphere and forunets, but I'm not confident that I'll be confident enough to buy a $250 phone at the end of my research. Therefore, I'm turning to to forums to see if someone knowledgeable can quickly answer my questions so that I'll be able to run out and buy a phone right now.
The phones on the classifieds that I'm looking at are:
A Galaxy S2 on contract with Bell Mobility (Canada) - $350
A Galaxy S 4G factory unlocked - $280
An unlocked and rooted Nexus S - $300
HTC Desire broken proximity detector - $100
Nokia Lumia 710 - $200
HTC Wildfire S unlocked - $220
My questions:
Is the phone unlockable?
Will it work with a pre-paid SIM in the US? (which carriers, if known)
Will it work in Poland, France and Italy?
I'm computer savvy but sadly my knowledge is deficient in this area. If anyone can answer these questions, it would be much appreciated.
Get an unlocked phone
You said you need an unlocked one, You also said "A Galaxy S 4G factory unlocked - $280" why don't you just buy that then it will work with any sim, then just get an pay as you go sim with 3g for your trip?
Or if you want to unlock your iPhone, Jailbreak it then do this (youtube.com/watch?v=mB_L5gi94Cc) it might work.
hcaz301 said:
You said you need an unlocked one, You also said "A Galaxy S 4G factory unlocked - $280" why don't you just buy that then it will work with any sim, then just get an pay as you go sim with 3g for your trip?
Or if you want to unlock your iPhone, Jailbreak it then do this (youtube.com/watch?v=mB_L5gi94Cc) it might work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My question is whether an 'unlocked' Galaxy S will work in both the US and Europe with a pay as you go SIM that I buy?
I would say yes it would, if it is unlocked, it should be unlocked to any network anywhere, i may be wrong, but i would think it should work for you
The S2 and the S should work, but I'll let others confirm that. I believe that both have Sim card slots.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions &
Read the Forum Rules Ref Posting
Moving to Q&A
I've got a relative in China, and the prices on Taobao for many phones are simply unmatched. I'd like her to order a ZTE and a Lenovo phone and mail it to me. Problem is, these sellers claim that it's locked to a particular Chinese carrier.
This got me researching whether and how I can unlock a phone on my own. Useful information is quite scarce, so I am reaching out to the amazing XDA crowd, hoping that I can pick somebody's brain.
My hope is that the fact that so many paid services exist already and seemingly proliferate means that SIM unlocking smartphones isn't impossible, even if you're simply a power user. Are they using one of these hack boxes, a special algorithm? Can you learn how to do it with any phone, and are all locks created equal?
Cheers for having a read!
Most zte phones can be unlocked for fairly cheap price,but are some models that can not be unlocked specially if locked to a Chinese network (codes to western countries are more easily to find).The best thing would be to decide on a certain model then ask about the unlock and could give an exact answer
onlineunlocks said:
Most zte phones can be unlocked for fairly cheap price,but are some models that can not be unlocked specially if locked to a Chinese network (codes to western countries are more easily to find).The best thing would be to decide on a certain model then ask about the unlock and could give an exact answer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ZTE V967s and Lenovo A760, and cheers for responding.
This 2 are fairly new phones and for now there isn't a way to get unlocked,depending how popular are in a few month a solution might be available,but until then if you get one of those and is locked you will probably not be able to use it.So for now would recommend if you want this models better to get directly unlocked
I am going to be moving to Japan in about a month and had a quick question. From what I understand there is only 2 versions of it (820 for us & 821 rotw). I can pick up a Nexus 5 821 here for fairly cheap right now and just wanted to verify that the phone will work in Japan before I did so. I understand that using it in the US I would probably be limited to 3G which I could live with for the next few weeks if it gives me the opportunity to setup my phone before leaving and just swapping the sim & apn settings.
I guess my question is; Are all unlocked LG-D821 models the same or is the LG-D821(JA) different in some way that would affect its usage? Also, would the unlocked D821 be able to access the Japan play store with just the sim change or would I need to re-flash for that?
OR Is all of this just going to cause me a headache and I should just wait until I get there to buy one? :silly:
Ok so the Moto G is rooted and bootloader unlock capable, there's ROM dumps of the VZW and RW roms, and both Republic Wireless and Verizon are CDMA, but I can't seem to find any hard data on whether or not it's possible to flash a Verizon Moto G to Republic?
There's certainly no guides for how to do it, the only guide on this forum is flashing a Boost Moto G to Pageplus...
The reason I ask is because there are a ton of Verizon prepaid Moto G's on Ebay for $75 apiece, which is literally half off the price of ordering from RW.
Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Is it just a matter of unlocking the phone, flashing the RW rom and modem, and activating the phone on RW?
I've done a ton of roots and flashes of various devices before, but I've never flashed a carrier-locked device to another carrier - I'm not scared to do it, I just want to know if it's possible at present. I know it's theoretically possible, but without someone confirming they've done it I'm leery of dropping $70 on this phone, though I'd really love to save $70 on it since I'm scrambling to replace my wife's phone after she managed to waterlog another phone less than 3 months after the previous one...
(And yes, I've searched this and other xda forums for the answer to this and turned up nothing concrete...)
illuminerdi said:
Ok so the Moto G is rooted and bootloader unlock capable, there's ROM dumps of the VZW and RW roms, and both Republic Wireless and Verizon are CDMA, but I can't seem to find any hard data on whether or not it's possible to flash a Verizon Moto G to Republic?
There's certainly no guides for how to do it, the only guide on this forum is flashing a Boost Moto G to Pageplus...
The reason I ask is because there are a ton of Verizon prepaid Moto G's on Ebay for $75 apiece, which is literally half off the price of ordering from RW.
Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Is it just a matter of unlocking the phone, flashing the RW rom and modem, and activating the phone on RW?
I've done a ton of roots and flashes of various devices before, but I've never flashed a carrier-locked device to another carrier - I'm not scared to do it, I just want to know if it's possible at present. I know it's theoretically possible, but without someone confirming they've done it I'm leery of dropping $70 on this phone, though I'd really love to save $70 on it since I'm scrambling to replace my wife's phone after she managed to waterlog another phone less than 3 months after the previous one...
(And yes, I've searched this and other xda forums for the answer to this and turned up nothing concrete...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are probably no guides because the bootloader on the Verizon model is currently the only one that cannot be officially unlocked. I say "officially" because, apparently, there's a "Chinese guy" on these forums that you can pay to get you a code to unlock it. I bought one from Amazon (when it was $70) to use as a WiFi only device (aka media player), but I found out that same night that the VZW model is the only one with the locked down bootloader. Needless to say, I refused the package, and it went right back to where it came from. I knew that price was too good to be true. It's cheaper because the VZW model is junk (at least in my opinion).
charesa39 said:
There are probably no guides because the bootloader on the Verizon model is currently the only one that cannot be officially unlocked. I say "officially" because, apparently, there's a "Chinese guy" on these forums that you can pay to get you a code to unlock it. I bought one from Amazon (when it was $70) to use as a WiFi only device (aka media player), but I found out that same night that the VZW model is the only one with the locked down bootloader. Needless to say, I refused the package, and it went right back to where it came from. I knew that price was too good to be true. It's cheaper because the VZW model is junk (at least in my opinion).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh I thought the unlock posted here was not an "official" unlock and therefore would work on any Moto G because it was more or less a "hack", was I mistaken about that?
What about flashing a Boost over to RW or some other variant? I can get a Boost Moto G on ebay for about $100, so that's still $50 cheaper than ordering from RW.
illuminerdi said:
Oh I thought the unlock posted here was not an "official" unlock and therefore would work on any Moto G because it was more or less a "hack", was I mistaken about that?
What about flashing a Boost over to RW or some other variant? I can get a Boost Moto G on ebay for about $100, so that's still $50 cheaper than ordering from RW.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, before you are able to flash anything onto your phone, you need to have an unlocked bootloader. In order to do that, you have to register with Motorola, and then go through a couple steps to get the unlock code for your device. This is so they can keep track of you unlocking your bootloader because it voids your warranty (in the US at least). This is the first step in all the guides I've seen for rooting this device. Then after that, you can flash a custom recovery, root, etc. If you Google "motorola unlockable bootloader", you can click on the link that takes you to the official Motorola page that shows which of their devices can have their bootloader unlocked.
As far flashing Boost to RW, I couldn't tell ya. I'm not familiar with either one of those. If it were possible, I would imagine it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do.
Since Boost and RW are both Sprint-MVNO's, I would think it would be a pretty easy straight forward flash. But I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Does RW offer "bring your own device" ?
Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk
jcmarv said:
Since Boost and RW are both Sprint-MVNO's, I would think it would be a pretty easy straight forward flash. But I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Does RW offer "bring your own device" ?
Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sort of...they only have 2 phones that you can use, and you MUST use their ROM on the phones since it includes special controls for making calls over wifi when the signal is available. One of the 2 phones you can buy from them is the Moto G, and their ROM has been dumped by another forum member here. You can activate service directly from the phone itself, and they do allow reselling phones and activating used phones, so in theory you could buy a cheap Moto G somewhere, unlock the bootloader, flash the RW firmware onto it, and then activate.
But nobody has actually confirmed whether or not this works, and I'm not really in a position financially at the moment to plunk down the money to experiment like this.
To add another layer of complexity on top of everything, the Verizon Moto G's are the only ones that you can't unlock the bootloader on (yet), but I'm going to ignore that hurdle for now - I'll get a Boost phone or something instead if that ends up being the only block.
Does anyone have a spare Moto G that they want to test this on (or could send me...?) I think RW has a 30 day guarantee, so even if you signed up for service with them to test cellula+3G data you could cancel without paying any money.
Though I suspect I may have to be the guinea pig on this, but again, I'm not really in a position to pay for this right now. I wouldn't mind waiting but my wife needs a phone soon.
illuminerdi said:
Sort of...they only have 2 phones that you can use, and you MUST use their ROM on the phones since it includes special controls for making calls over wifi when the signal is available. One of the 2 phones you can buy from them is the Moto G, and their ROM has been dumped by another forum member here. You can activate service directly from the phone itself, and they do allow reselling phones and activating used phones, so in theory you could buy a cheap Moto G somewhere, unlock the bootloader, flash the RW firmware onto it, and then activate.
But nobody has actually confirmed whether or not this works, and I'm not really in a position financially at the moment to plunk down the money to experiment like this.
To add another layer of complexity on top of everything, the Verizon Moto G's are the only ones that you can't unlock the bootloader on (yet), but I'm going to ignore that hurdle for now - I'll get a Boost phone or something instead if that ends up being the only block.
Does anyone have a spare Moto G that they want to test this on (or could send me...?) I think RW has a 30 day guarantee, so even if you signed up for service with them to test cellula+3G data you could cancel without paying any money.
Though I suspect I may have to be the guinea pig on this, but again, I'm not really in a position to pay for this right now. I wouldn't mind waiting but my wife needs a phone soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have an unlocked verizon moto g and i flashed the republic software on my phone but sadly the activation can never complete.
eg0097 said:
I have an unlocked verizon moto g and i flashed the republic software on my phone but sadly the activation can never complete.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did anyone figure this out?
I would like to use a Verizon Moto G on Republic Wireless.
I'm also interested in this, but doing it the other way around: flashing a non-Republic Wireless firmware onto a Moto G XT1031 which came from Republic Wiress / with RepublicWireless Lollipop 5.1 firmware and locked Motorola bootloader. So that I can use my phone with other CDMA-based, Sprint MVNOs (i.e. RingPlus, Ting, Tello etc).
I am actually switched over to RingPlus (cancelled the RW service). With the stock RW XT1031_falcon_cdma 5.1 firmware, the phone handles inbound voice calls well. The only issue is obviously the dial out voice calls - RW's own freaking software app intercepts my dial out call and will reject it, arguing that I have no active RW service...