My GOD! Has anyone ever successfully unlocked this phone?!

[TLRtheory]

After having a ton of phones unlocked through cellunlocker.com, I was very optimistic that getting the T-Mobile version of this phone to work on Cricket would be no sweat.

Which was all such a beautiful dream. I absolutely scored by finding this phone for $89.99 in MINT condition... and when it came in I immediately fell in love with how good it looks, how amazing the battery life is and those OUTSTANDING speakers.

...but cellunlocker... for the first time ever... failed me. And it had to do so with the phone I was most likely gonna have be my daily driver.

Let my dad try it with his TMO sim and it worked like a charm... but I can't get anything with Cricket except the unlock code screen.

...and oh my God... contacting T-Mobile... was a nightmare.

I must've talked to 12 people, none of which seemed to even know phones could be locked to a carrier, much less how to do anything about it. Finally one person tried to escalate me to a care specialist... which I was told would take 6 minutes to connect... it took 2 hours, the dept closed, and I was told there were no agents to connect to.

Holy **** dude... what a mess.

Anything else I can do? Given that my dad is on TMO and has an account in good standing, is there any way I could use his account to get this phone unlocked?

 

[libra89]

I would say that he can use one of his lines to use it for a month or so and then request an unlock.

 

[aj173]

You might as well just re-sell it on eBay.

Even if you get it unlocked from T-Mobile (which is a nightmare on its own), the phone will NEVER work correctly on Cricket. The T-Mo firmware is designed to cripple this phone on other carriers. Your basic talk and text will work, but things like MMS, visual voicemail, and just about every other feature will never work.

I've been down this path as a Cricket user, and the phone now sits in the back of my closet as a temporary backup just in case my primary phone is broken. It's pretty sweet for a backup phone I'll never use, but complete garbage as a daily.

 

[TLRtheory]

So if I'm reading into things correctly, Straight Talk is to T-Mobile what Cricket is to AT&T, and has no problems using their phones. Is that correct? If so, I'd have to drop from 4GB to 2GB, but I could continue paying $70/mo for my wife and I instead of the $100 T-Mobile quoted me.

You might as well just re-sell it on eBay.

Even if you get it unlocked from T-Mobile (which is a nightmare on its own), the phone will NEVER work correctly on Cricket. The T-Mo firmware is designed to cripple this phone on other carriers. Your basic talk and text will work, but things like MMS, visual voicemail, and just about every other feature will never work.

I've been down this path as a Cricket user, and the phone now sits in the back of my closet as a temporary backup just in case my primary phone is broken. It's pretty sweet for a backup phone I'll never use, but complete garbage as a daily.

I'm quite confident I can get VVM and MMS to work if I can overcome unlocking... but that alone is way easier said than done.

You say you've been through it... if you don't mind elaborating: what did you have to go through to get yours unlocked? ...and if this truly is hopeless, are you open to selling your unlocked Idol 4S?

 

[Player Piano]

With T-Mo you normally have to have the device active for 40 days on their network before they will give you the unlock code. And yes, their customer service is absolutely horrendous.

 

[RumoredNow]

So if I'm reading into things correctly, Straight Talk is to T-Mobile what Cricket is to AT&T,

Not really. Straight Talk offers SIMs to run on AT&T, T-Mo, Vzw or Sprint towers. It is the "child" (wholly owned mvno) of none of those carriers.

Cricket is the "child" of AT&T like Metro PCS is the "child" of T-Mobile. You should be able to use a Metro PCS SIM in the locked Idol 4S without issue. But length of service on Metro will not count toward getting the device unlocked.

 

[TLRtheory]

Cricket is the "child" of AT&T like Metro PCS is the "child" of T-Mobile. You should be able to use a Metro PCS SIM in the locked Idol 4S without issue. But length of service on Metro will not count toward getting the device unlocked.

Thanks for clarifying that for me. I mostly wanted to know this because I'm not entirely opposed to switching carriers to use this phone... just didn't want to pay TMo $30 more for the same thing I get out of Cricket.

And it appears I can actually save $5/mo going the MetroPCS route.

 

[nate0]

I tried unlocking a T-MO US variant almost a couple months back, but it was a panic effort caused by Alcatel's mishap..I ended up getting a refund from the service and a new exchange device from Alcatel later down the road... Later I found a way to circumvent the issues found in the T-Mobile model/FW while using it on AT&T only, but the average user should not need to do that, as it required interop unlocking and a few other tricks with provisioning files from a lumia. I have not heard any success stories on this model yet... Oh fwiw I had to send my last Alcatel back about 2 weeks ago for a boot loop issue, and guess what they did AGAIN. Sent me a T-Mobile branded model locked to T-Mobile. Alcatel I fear for you guys....

 

[dorelse]

I've unlocked 2 of them so far, but I'm also a t-mobile customer and did things following their process. I just requested a code (it took a day), and t-mobile emailed me the unlock code. I stuck in a Verizon SIM punched in the code provided from t-mobile and it said 'network lock removed' or something like that.

Obviously, as Nate W has stated, that doesn't mean it'll 'just work' on AT&T, but it can be done.

 

[aj173]

If you really want to get this phone working on cricket, I think this three-step process should work:

1.) Submit the phone under warranty saying that the speaker is broken.

2.) Return the new phone, saying that you were supposed to get an open market model.

3.) Repeat step 2 several times until you receive an actual open market, unlocked variant.

Voila. Unlocked and fully functional on Cricket, without even having to deal with T-Mo.

 

[Rick_VB]

Assuming an unlocked phone to begin with, has anyone successfully used this phone on Verizon? What was the coverage like? What features could not be made to work?

 

[libra89]

Assuming an unlocked phone to begin with, has anyone successfully used this phone on Verizon? What was the coverage like? What features could not be made to work?

The Idol 4s has never worked on Verizon and it probably never will, so this is not possible.

 

[nate0]

The Idol 4s has never worked on Verizon and it probably never will, so this is not possible.

I think you are right. Two reasons I see why it will not work. It does not support the LTE bands needed. It is lacking Band 13 for one. So even if Verizon allowed unlocked LTE only phones, it would miss out there. Plus I think VZ as it still operates on CDMA until they repurpose all of it means the phone has to be CDMA (B0 B1) compatible to activate. Which it is not as far as I can tell.

 

[Chubbynaga]

I just unlocked my Tmobile version successfully, and it worked on ATT now. Tmobile rep was refusing to unlock, but I tried a different rep, and they did it.

 

[TunedM52]

Nope. I got one from T-Mobile when they went down to $288. I told them I intended to unlock to use on AT&T, they said it needed to be active on their network for 45 consecutive days. NONE of the paid unlocking sites I used to use on iPhones/Lumias/Androids work for this phone.

Then AT&T decided to jack up my monthly rates, final straw, switched to T-Mobile and used it for 45 days, called customer support and they remotely unlocked it. (T-Mobile has the absolute worst customer service, consistantly, compared to other carriers. But that's the small price to pay for the low monthly rate and best plans).

My now unlocked T-Mobile Idol 4s accepts all carriers now, even though it's useless to me hah.

 

[nate0]

Nope. I got one from T-Mobile when they went down to $288. I told them I intended to unlock to use on AT&T, they said it needed to be active on their network for 45 consecutive days. NONE of the paid unlocking sites I used to use on iPhones/Lumias/Androids work for this phone.

Then AT&T decided to jack up my monthly rates, final straw, switched to T-Mobile and used it for 45 days, called customer support and they remotely unlocked it. (T-Mobile has the absolute worst customer service, consistantly, compared to other carriers. But that's the small price to pay for the low monthly rate and best plans).

My now unlocked T-Mobile Idol 4s accepts all carriers now, even though it's useless to me hah.

Are you back on AT&T?

 

[omar al-tal]

hello , i bought a used alcatel 4s windows no contract locked to t-mobile , is there a way to unlock it using third party service , i live outside the US , thanks

 

[TLRtheory]

Just to follow up, I ended up ditching Cricket and switching to Metro PCS.

Came out way ahead actually. Getting about 6x the speeds, jumped up from 4GB of data to 6GB, went from paying $70 total for our two lines to $65... and as an added couple of bonuses I no longer have to put in area code when I'm dialing within my own state, and my visual voicemail actually works now.

Unfortunately that allowed me to put in some serious time with the idol 4S to really up close and personal with it's problems. I don't know why this phone is glitchy with The Dark Knight Rises, but that game is unplayably glitchy on this phone. The camera turned out to be just as horrid as Michael Fisher said it was. I cannot get over how slow the shooter is, how often the focus just got lost waiting for the damn thing to shoot... and even if I try to deal with the shooter, I can't deal with the glitchy video recording bug. Likely gonna be selling my Idol 4S. Sad, because those speakers and the general hardware design are still awe-inspiring.

 

[brian770]

i just bought my idol 4s from microsoft store...unlocked and it works perfectly on at&t.

 

[fatclue_98]

Sorry if I'm late to the party. I have a T-Mobile Idol and I submitted my request on 1/3/18. Two days later I received an email from the Magenta Morons saying that they couldn't find the unlock code and were forwarding the request to Alcatel. Lo and behold after almost a MONTH, I got my unlock code today.