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Wanting to test T-Mobile Unlock

V

verngator

Member
We recently switched to T-Mobile from Sprint, purchasing our own pre-owned phones that were TMO branded (two S4's, a Note2, and an iPhone5). Since we own the phones outright, we asked T-Mobile to unlock them in preparation for a trip overseas. We have received notice and instructions that the phones are unlocked.

I know we can use our T-Mobile phones and current SIM cards in the countries we will be visiting - yay TMO! - but that won't get us the fast data we want, only 2G. So the plan is to purchase SIM cards after we arrive.

I'd like to test the phones with a non-T-Mobile SIM card to verify that they are unlocked before we leave, in case there are complications.

T-Mobile sells "by the day" plans - I know this because we tested T-Mobile coverage all over town before we switched - but I can't seem to find another carrier that does. Any suggestions? I went looking all over the AT&T site and didn't find anything close to a daily plan.
 
I guess I could ask around the office...coming from Sprint, I am unfamiliar with the process.

T-Mobile sent me an email:

Unlock Code: xxxxxxxx

Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. Below you will see the Instructions for unlocking your Samsung device. Please be advised a non T-Mobile SIM card MUST be used to unlock this device.

1. Insert a NON T-Mobile SIM & turn Device on
2. The Device will automatically prompt you to enter code into an empty field.
3. Click/Tap in the empty field above the "Unlock & Dismiss" options (this will display a key pad on the screen).
4. Using the key pad input the Unlock Code provided by T-Mobile.
5. Press the Back button to remove the keyboard from screen.
6. Click/Tap the "Unlock" option; handset should display "Network Unlock Successful".

Thank You,

Customer Service
T-Mobile USA, Inc.​

It doesn't look difficult, but as mentioned, I'd like to try it out.

Once you do this, do you have do something with the APN settings to actually use the phone with the other SIM?
 
verngator said:
I guess I could ask around the office...coming from Sprint, I am unfamiliar with the process.

T-Mobile sent me an email:

Unlock Code: xxxxxxxx

Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. Below you will see the Instructions for unlocking your Samsung device. Please be advised a non T-Mobile SIM card MUST be used to unlock this device.

1. Insert a NON T-Mobile SIM & turn Device on
2. The Device will automatically prompt you to enter code into an empty field.
3. Click/Tap in the empty field above the "Unlock & Dismiss" options (this will display a key pad on the screen).
4. Using the key pad input the Unlock Code provided by T-Mobile.
5. Press the Back button to remove the keyboard from screen.
6. Click/Tap the "Unlock" option; handset should display "Network Unlock Successful".

Thank You,

Customer Service
T-Mobile USA, Inc.​

It doesn't look difficult, but as mentioned, I'd like to try it out.

Once you do this, do you have do something with the APN settings to actually use the phone with the other SIM?
Click to expand...

Yes, or at least I do on my Nexus. When I swap cards between T-Mo and Metro, I need to go in and select the correct APN for the network. You may also need to scan for available networks, and select the network for your card before you select the APN.

Fortunately, this is easy in later versions of Android as the appropriate menus are in the Mobile Networks section of settings.
 
I would definitely make sure it's correctly unlocked before going overseas. :) The unlock process is very easy, just ask someone if you can borrow their SIM and follow those instructions.
 
If you don't want to bug a friend:
Go to ebay.
Search for Prepaid SIM and buy a SIM for $.99 shipped.

H2O or Net10 or pretty much any will be good to test with.

Might be able to do similar in Target/Walmart, I'm not sure. Might have to buy the SIM with minutes there.
 
Just in case you didn't know, you can buy fast international speeds from T-Mobile. You can buy 100MB, good for one day, for $15; 200MB, good for a week, for $25; or 500 MB, good for 14 days, for $50.

While it likely isn't as inexpensive as buying the data locally, it does have the advantage (at least with the week and two week plans) of working as you move between countries. You won't have to worry if a SIM you bought in one country will still work in the other countries you visit.
 
Wow, this is all great advice!

I ended up calling AT&T. They are shipping me a prepaid GoPhone SIM for free. You can buy one day of unlimited talk and text for $2.00 and data for pennies. So that way I can test all the phones on the account in one day using the same SIM card, except for the iPhone. (I suppose that I could call them back and ask for a nano SIM to test my daughter's phone.)

Where we live there is excellent coverage with TMO but I hear that if you travel to certain rural areas it's difficult to get a signal. This has happened to us only one time - during a trip to Jekyll Island we had poor service on the southeast area of the island, at the soccer fields...where oddly enough the Sprint user who was with us had excellent coverage! Maybe it would be a good idea to keep a spare SIM card around in case we find ourselves in the same situation? I also heard later from a TMO rep that I could have changed the Network settings to GSM only, which might have helped the voice and text roaming process along a bit. Does that work?

 
verngator said:
Where we live there is excellent coverage with TMO but I hear that if you travel to certain rural areas it's difficult to get a signal. This has happened to us only one time - during a trip to Jekyll Island we had poor service on the southeast area of the island, at the soccer fields...where oddly enough the Sprint user who was with us had excellent coverage! Maybe it would be a good idea to keep a spare SIM card around in case we find ourselves in the same situation? I also heard later from a TMO rep that I could have changed the Network settings to GSM only, which might have helped the voice and text roaming process along a bit. Does that work?
Click to expand...

Curious how long ago you encountered that. Since T-Mo LTE is only available as of recently, if this was several years ago, I'll wager that you were on a GSM tower, so making that switch wouldn't have mattered.

All existing GSM towers will likely get an LTE radio system. However, if you were on LTE, and it was a new tower, then yes, you may have received better reception by forcing GSM only. I don't know if GSM equipment will be put on new towers. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can chime in there.
 
verngator said:
Wow, this is all great advice!

I ended up calling AT&T. They are shipping me a prepaid GoPhone SIM for free. You can buy one day of unlimited talk and text for $2.00 and data for pennies. So that way I can test all the phones on the account in one day using the same SIM card, except for the iPhone. (I suppose that I could call them back and ask for a nano SIM to test my daughter's phone.)

Where we live there is excellent coverage with TMO but I hear that if you travel to certain rural areas it's difficult to get a signal. This has happened to us only one time - during a trip to Jekyll Island we had poor service on the southeast area of the island, at the soccer fields...where oddly enough the Sprint user who was with us had excellent coverage! Maybe it would be a good idea to keep a spare SIM card around in case we find ourselves in the same situation? I also heard later from a TMO rep that I could have changed the Network settings to GSM only, which might have helped the voice and text roaming process along a bit. Does that work?
Click to expand...

TheAmazingDave said:
Curious how long ago you encountered that. Since T-Mo LTE is only available as of recently, if this was several years ago, I'll wager that you were on a GSM tower, so making that switch wouldn't have mattered.

All existing GSM towers will likely get an LTE radio system. However, if you were on LTE, and it was a new tower, then yes, you may have received better reception by forcing GSM only. I don't know if GSM equipment will be put on new towers. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can chime in there.
Click to expand...

The trip to Jekyll Island was in November/December. We only moved to T-Mobile in November.

I looked at the TMO online coverage map. The area was listed as 2G (not Service Partner). We drove right by a tower on the island, but obviously TMO had no presence there.
 
I spend about 30% of my time in Europe and here is something you might want to consider....Europe (I believe) is all GSM so US providers like TMo and AT&T play very well with networks in Europe. You will have no problem connecting to networks while you are overseas.

As far as 4G / LTE is concerned, Europe is lagging the U.S. in terms of roll out, so 4G can be spotty. My experience is primarily in Zurich, Switzerland and they started lighting up their 4G network in early 2013 and it is still rolling out. Many European countries are in a similar position.

That said, HSPA and HSPA + is readily available and that is what you will probably be using since most U.S. phones don't have radios that are compatible with Europe's LTE bands. My suggestion is that you check out TMo's international roaming. If you exceed your high speed cap, TMo will offer you an opportunity to buy more (if I read their material correctly). My guess is you will have at least 3G most of the time even if you consume all your high speed data. 3G is plenty fast enough for email and texting.

I'm going to take my own advice next month when I return to Zurich for another 2 week business trip. Going to switch from Verizon (which sucks in Europe) to TMo next week. Just waiting for the Xperia Z1s to hit the stores so I can do a hands-on comparison between it and a Nexus 5.

My two cents!
 
LuvMusic said:
I spend about 30% of my time in Europe and here is something you might want to consider....Europe (I believe) is all GSM so US providers like TMo and AT&T play very well with networks in Europe. You will have no problem connecting to networks while you are overseas.

As far as 4G / LTE is concerned, Europe is lagging the U.S. in terms of roll out, so 4G can be spotty. My experience is primarily in Zurich, Switzerland and they started lighting up their 4G network in early 2013 and it is still rolling out. Many European countries are in a similar position.

That said, HSPA and HSPA + is readily available and that is what you will probably be using since most U.S. phones don't have radios that are compatible with Europe's LTE bands. My suggestion is that you check out TMo's international roaming. If you exceed your high speed cap, TMo will offer you an opportunity to buy more (if I read their material correctly). My guess is you will have at least 3G most of the time even if you consume all your high speed data. 3G is plenty fast enough for email and texting.
Click to expand...


I'll check the various carrier networks where we are going to see which might offer the best compatibility with my S4. Maybe we'll play around with both the TMO service and a local SIM as well as TMO's service. We are more interested in data for Maps than in voice, although texting back home will be nice.
 
verngator said:

I'll check the various carrier networks where we are going to see which might offer the best compatibility with my S4. Maybe we'll play around with both the TMO service and a local SIM as well as TMO's service. We are more interested in data for Maps than in voice, although texting back home will be nice.
Click to expand...

Cool....sounds like a great experiment. I'll be interested in your results. :)
 
Good luck, I am in Jacksonville, t mobile lte is lite and running well here, but getting away from bigger cities it is not as prevalent yet.
You may be able to take the iphone to any aio/att store and put the nano sim in just to unlock it, not sure on the store policy but some reps that work there may not care.
 
new optimus said:
Good luck, I am in Jacksonville, t mobile lte is lite and running well here, but getting away from bigger cities it is not as prevalent yet.
You may be able to take the iphone to any aio/att store and put the nano sim in just to unlock it, not sure on the store policy but some reps that work there may not care.
Click to expand...
I think Florida has pretty good TMO coverage compared with Georgia. Moving to TMO was a great deal for us as there has been coverage nearly everywhere we have needed to go. For people who absolutely have to have coverage in every remote place I suspect they will be stuck paying $$$$ for Verizon.

Unlocking the iPhone was pretty easy. I bought that phone and one of our S4's pre-owned from another T-Mobile user when we moved from Sprint to TMO.

A couple days after I asked TMO to unlock the iPhone, I received this email:

Unlock Code: see below

Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. 72 hours after receiving this email please follow the below instructions for unlocking your T-Mobile iPhone device.

1. Perform a backup (we suggest backing up through iCloud backup, however iTunes backup will work if you haven't setup iCloud)
2. Connect your iPhone to iTunes
o Important: This step must be performed using the USB cable connected to your PC or Mac in order to trigger the process.​
3. Within a few minutes, a screen will appear, "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked".
4. The device is now unlocked. You may now insert any non T-Mobile SIM card into the iPhone.

If the above steps do not work, then the 'restore device' process must be completed and an iTunes activation completed. In the re-activation of the device, the device unlock will be pulled down once activation is complete.
​

Testing the iPhone will be easy as I know a few AT&T iPhone users, but I'm not inclined to get my teen a SIM when we travel - she will do fine with WiFi and TMO-provided free roaming.
 
Sounds good. I recently switch to straight talk, using t mobile towers, good price same service, I have set up straight talk with att for my dad, in the sticks of iowa, and he is happy no dropped calls, but I dont know how data is, he is not that worried about data speeds.
 
new optimus said:
Sounds good. I recently switch to straight talk, using t mobile towers, good price same service, I have set up straight talk with att for my dad, in the sticks of iowa, and he is happy no dropped calls, but I dont know how data is, he is not that worried about data speeds.
Click to expand...

We looked into Straight Talk. After reviewing our usage patterns we determined that two users on our plan need unlimited data and two don't exceed 2.5GB/month. Even if we bumped everyone to unlimited data, we still come out ahead on TMO with company discount, even considering taxes. I think if we were only looking at individual plans, Straight Talk would be a good option.
 
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