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Thread: Unlocking phones

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    Manks is offline Serial procrastinator and general busybody
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    Default Unlocking phones

    We have a few old phones from the UK and US. To be fair, we've switched SIMs in them before and never had a problem. Do we need to get them unlocked to save us buying phones in NZ?

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    If you've used SIM from alternative UK operators then almost certainly not, they must already be unlocked.

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    Manks is offline Serial procrastinator and general busybody
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    Thanks Duncan74. We'll try all the phones with our US SIMs to see if they still work.

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    Ahhh, with the US phones then you may need to be carefull who you go with. Just voice calls shouldn't be an issue, but data will be an issue. The reverse of me, as I had to go Vodaphone. I think that you should look at XT from memory. If data isn't an issue then check that 2degrees has an agreement with the overseas company that your friends and family are on, as not all SMS will work.

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    If you find one of your phones needs unlocking make sure you do it before you get here- much easier to find places that do it in the UK (& presumably US) than in NZ.

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    When I moved to Melbourne, I had my phone unlocked in the US (Sony Z525). It took a little while to find the setting to allow data in addition to voice, but it was in there. My bet is that if you've gotten your phone unlocked, you'll be able to get data to flow as well (assuming your NZ plan has data).

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    If the above is in resposne to my post, the issue isn't data being locked, it's related to the frequencies used for data being different. So it's a case of signing up to the network that matches the hardware of your phone. In most other places then all the operators of a particular country use the same frequency (850 in US, 900 in UK). But in NZ there's a split between them. Eve if your phone is unlocked, you'll never get an original iphone to work on Vodaphone, and a 3g or 3gs will only work right in the middle of urban areas (with vodaphone).

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    Ah, I see what you mean. I guess this is when a pentaband phone comes in handy...
    Last edited by bmshanley; 30th August 2010 at 04:55 PM.

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    Even multi band phones tend to not have both 850mhz and 900mhz GSM. Voice is fine, it's data that is the sticking point, and of course that may be no problem at all to some people, or a critical flaw to others.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Duncan74 View Post
    Even multi band phones tend to not have both 850mhz and 900mhz GSM. Voice is fine, it's data that is the sticking point, and of course that may be no problem at all to some people, or a critical flaw to others.
    For Nokia phones there's an useful site forum.nokia.com. Devices / Device Specifications and you get all the details for a particular model.

    Nokia is the most widely available mobile phone manufacturer so the frequency support is something they do better than average. E.g. Samsung's Galaxy S does only 900/1900/2100 for 3G while Nokia N8 does 850/900/1700/1900/2100 (plus the quad-band GSM, of course).

    I've been wondering what is the reason why the different carriers in NZ use different frequencies. Telecom's old CDMA network blocked too much bandwidth in the 900 Mhz band?

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