Hi guys, I have a somewhat n00b question/story/scenario...
I'm a Canadian with a US iPhone 3G (16GB, Black). I am living in Canada now, and most of the time I keep it in Airplane mode while not in the US. Before I considered unlocking it for use in Canada, I had to have my iPhone sent away for replacement (there was a light leak and cracks in the housing). I sent it out from a US address near the border, and it was replaced and returned to the same US address. However, because of the limited cell phone service at the border, my AT&T SIM card did not activate itself (and predictably, it appears that it will not activate itself from Canada either). To this day I am still not really sure whether or not I have a refurbished iBrick (I'm hoping I don't!). So now that I have the device back, I want to unlock it, because I really miss using my iPhone as a phone (my Blackberry Pearl does not hold a candle to it)!
Today I phoned Bell customer service (and this could very well have been my first mistake) to see what changes I would need to make to my cell phone plan in order to use my iPhone with it. There have been rumors floating around that Bell will help customers unlock foreign iPhones to get as many as possible onto their network, so I asked about that too. They said that they could not help with unlocking process, but I could take my phone into any Bell store and they could determine whether or not the phone would be compatible for unlock and use with the Bell network. So, with this information, I took my iPhone into Bell today (probably my second mistake...) and all they did was put a Bell SIM card into the phone to see what would happen. I am familiar with the unlocking process in theory (although I haven't made any actual attempt yet to unlock my phone), and therefore did not have high hopes of this yielding any type of positive result...
The first time the Bell SIM was inserted, the iPhone started after a minute or two of showing the Apple screen, but would not pick up any network. I heard before that locked iPhones with foreign SIM cards in them will show a popup message saying: "This SIM Card is not compatible with this device, please insert an AT&T SIM card..." or something like that. No messages showed up. We then decided to turn it off and turn it on again, to see if doing this would trigger an activation request for the SIM card, but this time the iPhone refused to even get past the Apple screen. We waited for about 5 minutes before resetting it and putting the AT&T SIM card back in. Tried turning it on again and it still took about a minute for the iPhone to power up with the AT&T SIM, but aside from that, it came on as it should.
Is this a normal reaction for an iPhone that has a foreign SIM card put in it??
I'm a Canadian with a US iPhone 3G (16GB, Black). I am living in Canada now, and most of the time I keep it in Airplane mode while not in the US. Before I considered unlocking it for use in Canada, I had to have my iPhone sent away for replacement (there was a light leak and cracks in the housing). I sent it out from a US address near the border, and it was replaced and returned to the same US address. However, because of the limited cell phone service at the border, my AT&T SIM card did not activate itself (and predictably, it appears that it will not activate itself from Canada either). To this day I am still not really sure whether or not I have a refurbished iBrick (I'm hoping I don't!). So now that I have the device back, I want to unlock it, because I really miss using my iPhone as a phone (my Blackberry Pearl does not hold a candle to it)!
Today I phoned Bell customer service (and this could very well have been my first mistake) to see what changes I would need to make to my cell phone plan in order to use my iPhone with it. There have been rumors floating around that Bell will help customers unlock foreign iPhones to get as many as possible onto their network, so I asked about that too. They said that they could not help with unlocking process, but I could take my phone into any Bell store and they could determine whether or not the phone would be compatible for unlock and use with the Bell network. So, with this information, I took my iPhone into Bell today (probably my second mistake...) and all they did was put a Bell SIM card into the phone to see what would happen. I am familiar with the unlocking process in theory (although I haven't made any actual attempt yet to unlock my phone), and therefore did not have high hopes of this yielding any type of positive result...
The first time the Bell SIM was inserted, the iPhone started after a minute or two of showing the Apple screen, but would not pick up any network. I heard before that locked iPhones with foreign SIM cards in them will show a popup message saying: "This SIM Card is not compatible with this device, please insert an AT&T SIM card..." or something like that. No messages showed up. We then decided to turn it off and turn it on again, to see if doing this would trigger an activation request for the SIM card, but this time the iPhone refused to even get past the Apple screen. We waited for about 5 minutes before resetting it and putting the AT&T SIM card back in. Tried turning it on again and it still took about a minute for the iPhone to power up with the AT&T SIM, but aside from that, it came on as it should.
Is this a normal reaction for an iPhone that has a foreign SIM card put in it??
