IMEIs on T-Mobile web site

[HoosierDaddy]

I have a T-Mobile account with 8 lines.

I was looking at the unlock status of the phones on those lines and T-Mobile shows every T-Mobile branded phone having an IMEI that ends in zero. The two lines in my household are unbranded phones, so their IMEIs don't appear on the account, so I had no devices in hand to compare with what T-Mobile showed, but 100% of 6 T-Mobile phones had a zero last digit which struck me as very unlikely, but obviously "possible".

I then proceeded to request unlock codes for two of those 6 phones and both unlock requests came back with a code for the phones' IMEIs. But both of those said the IMEIs for both phones ended with nine rather than zero, the rest of the IMEI matched what the website showed.

So this makes me wonder if the last digit of IMEIs are meaningless and T-Mobile only retains the IMEI up to the last digit and then sticks a last digit on it and a different digit is hard coded into different software, ie: a zero for IMEIs in the user's account website and a nine in the unlock code email system.

I won't have physical access to the phones in question for over a week so can only speculate at the moment.

Will be interesting to see if the unlock procedure works if the unlock code is based on the entire IMEI because apparently part of T-Mobile thinks all IMEIs end in zero and another part claims they all end in nine. I think we would have heard about unlocks of Windows phones failing so the most likely explanation is the unlock algorithm in the phone does not use the last digit of the actual IMEI to validate what is a valid unlock code and neither does the logic used by T-Mobile to generate the unlock code.

What do other T-Mobile customers see? Do the IMEIs on the account website all end in zero?

 

[nate0]

I have a T-Mobile account with 8 lines.

I was looking at the unlock status of the phones on those lines and T-Mobile shows every T-Mobile branded phone having an IMEI that ends in zero. The two lines in my household are unbranded phones, so their IMEIs don't appear on the account, so I had no devices in hand to compare with what T-Mobile showed, but 100% of 6 T-Mobile phones had a zero last digit which struck me as very unlikely, but obviously "possible".

I then proceeded to request unlock codes for two of those 6 phones and both unlock requests came back with a code for the phones' IMEIs. But both of those said the IMEIs for both phones ended with nine rather than zero, the rest of the IMEI matched what the website showed.

So this makes me wonder if the last digit of IMEIs are meaningless and T-Mobile only retains the IMEI up to the last digit and then sticks a last digit on it and a different digit is hard coded into different software, ie: a zero for IMEIs in the user's account website and a nine in the unlock code email system.

I won't have physical access to the phones in question for over a week so can only speculate at the moment.

Will be interesting to see if the unlock procedure works if the unlock code is based on the entire IMEI because apparently part of T-Mobile thinks all IMEIs end in zero and another part claims they all end in nine. I think we would have heard about unlocks of Windows phones failing so the most likely explanation is the unlock algorithm in the phone does not use the last digit of the actual IMEI to validate what is a valid unlock code and neither does the logic used by T-Mobile to generate the unlock code.

What do other T-Mobile customers see? Do the IMEIs on the account website all end in zero?

It might be a luhn digit to factor in the luhn checksum/algorithm for identifiable purposes of the account strictly to T-mobile or even other carriers depending on how they operate. I just read up on how an imei operates, and that seems like it could be the only current answer for it (t-mobile) using the imei that way. IPhones are similar I think in that as they have an imei and an imeisv (imei + software version) included in the phone firmware settings. Is similar to the imei plus the luhn cheksum number. Might be why they are listed this way. I'm not an expert and don't quote me, I am just suggesting this after reading about it.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Curiouser and curiouser. I called one of the people and asked for them to display the IMEI of their phone and read it to me.

It ended in six. So the account web page shows that same IMEI except ending in zero instead of six. The unlock code email says the code is for the same IMEI except ending in nine rather than six.