French iPhone unlocked in Belgium, but something strange

Hey,

Me and 2 of my friends bought an iPhone in France on the 29/11, asked for the unlock at 01/12 and untill today did not get unlocked.

Although one of my friends got the letter from Orange that the unlock should be ok, he did not manage to unlock his phone, calling Orange again (like the 20th time) and even calling Apple France, they started to play the blame game. Orange said it is Apple and vice versa.

Last night, I did some restore to see if my IMEI was transmitted to Apple and got processed already, but I forgot to remove my sim card of the belgium operator.

After the restore I got an error telling me that the restore failed, I removed the belgian sim, inserted my Orange one and restored again, the result was that I finally got the message that the phone was unlocked.
I checked the Orange sim for the 100 euro credit and it is still there.

So my friends were restoring also the way Orange told us, with the Orange sim inserted. I told them my story, they tried it, the exact same way.

so a restore with a Belgian Base(operator) SIM
get an error
replace the sim with the Orange SIM
restore again
iPhone unlocked.

I don't know if this worked because we started the procedure with Orange or if it is just a bug. anyway, can anybody try this and confirm that this works when you didn't start the procedure???

We have 3 unlocked iPhones done exactly the same way

PS: you need to install iWorld to use your iPhone with a Belgian SIM because it crashes on receiving a call otherwise.

hello fellow Belgian friends :
1. what you describe is normal/known/logical : get the unlock via iTunes using the original Orange SIM, so this is not a bug
2. since you have 3 officially unlocked iPhone,s please visit tread http://hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=19494
and if possible give your information to help out to find the NCK
tot ziens/au revoir

is it normal that the unlock is only performed after you install the foreign SIM and and do a restore with the foreign SIM in the phone?

And is it normal that the credit Orange is supposed to withdraw from my card is not withdrawn, but I still was able to get the unlock done by Apple??

If that's so I rest my case, but otherwise I would suggest somebody with a locked French phone tries this to find out of it is just a mistake by Orange or something more.

i will later tonight perform the NCK check but I need to install a windows first...

Kind regards

it's good to know that officially unlocked iPhones do work outside of France. And really the procedure you described is a bit strange.. But maybe they just needed some to process your IMEIs

And yet another person had the same happening.

So can anyone without the unlock procedure already started please try the following to see if the iPhone unlocks?

1. Orange sim in phone
2. Restore
3. No unlock
4. Remove orange SIM, put in Foreign SIM
5. Restore
6. You should get an error telling you that the restore failed
7. Put in your Orange SIM
8. restore
9. You should get the message, that the iPhone is unlocked.

This is what me and 3 other people did to get their iPhone unlocked, but we all had the procedure for official unlock in progress, but we were all in different stages of the procedure.

Me, I asked for the procedure, got confirmation that the data was dispatched to the team Orange has for the unlock, but no money was retrieved from the SIM to Orange (unlocked for 2 days now, still no money gone)

1 Friend received the letter and had the money withdrawn, could not unlock with the Orange sim inserted but when following this procedure the unlock happened

other friend and owner of Macgeek had the money withdrawn did not receive a letter, could not unlock with Orange SIM inserted but with the above procedure it worked

so now if somebody could try this without asking Orange for an unlock, to find out if it works for them also...

Greetz

How can you go into itunes with a non-orange sim. All I get is

The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported. and iTunes refuses to recognize the phone.

Therefore, I cannot run the restore with a non-orange sim to get my unlock, which I paid for and received the letter.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bunker

Hey,

...
so a restore with a Belgian Base(operator) SIM
...
.

---

How can you restore? My iTunes refuse to connect to iPhone with a non-orange SIM card

Are you saying that the computer can see the iphone with the orange sim in it , but not your other sim ?

Check your version of itunes , it should be 7.5

I have the 7.5 (19). I tried on both Windows and OS-X.

If I start the iphone with non-orange SIM, I get the message The Sim card inserted does not appear to be valid .... The iphone icone is in the left pane, but only option it has (right click) is eject.

If I start the phone with orange sim, it gets activated and the menu shows Sync, Transfer Purchased and Reset Warning. I can change the SIM card AFTER I started with Orange, but must NOT disconnect the phone. After switching the card to non-orange this way, I run restore and then Orange restore (as per the guide above) but phone does not get unlocked.

Any ideas?

IS there anything else that Orange provided? Is the firmware downloaded different?
Obviously they don't make you pick french from the english menus, so there is a slightly different firmware floating around, correct?

I would love to perhaps compare the firmware package your itune downloaded compared to our US ones.

Maybe a load of the europeen firmware has the unlock built-in? lol