{"id":13974,"date":"2013-01-06T11:30:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T11:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=13974"},"modified":"2013-01-06T11:30:02","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T11:30:02","slug":"unlocking-a-vodafone-ireland-iphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=13974","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking  A Vodafone Ireland iPhone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m moving networks, from Vodafone Ireland to 3 Ireland. My contract is finished, and if I get an upgrade phone with Vodafone, the price of the monthly bill will go up, and my monthly data allowance of 1GB will be halved.&#160; Three on the other hand, will give me a contract that is \u20ac5 cheaper than what I currently have, give me \u201call you can eat data\u201d (traffic shaping after 15 GB in a month), and free data roaming to the UK, including Northern Ireland.&#160; 3 also has a better data signal in areas that I spend time in.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going with a SIM-only deal with 3.&#160; That\u2019s because the basic price that I want to pay doesn\u2019t offer a phone in the deal.&#160; I\u2019ll buy a phone elsewhere, maybe in the USA when I\u2019m there next month, and that\u2019ll work out cheaper over 18-24 months.&#160; It also means I only have a rolling 1 month commitment to 3, instead of being locked into a contract.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve decided to unlock my Vodafone Ireland iPhone 4 and use it for a month or two with the new SIM.&#160; I went onto the My Vodafone site, an followed the instructions to get an IMEI number, submit it, and get a NAC to unlock the phone.&#160; Problem#1: the IMEI number was not recognised.&#160; Problem#2: no matter what I did on the Customer Service line, I couldn\u2019t get through to a human, until I lied and said I wanted to buy a new phone\/contract <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-smile\" style=\"border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none\" alt=\"Smile\" src=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/wlEmoticon-smile2.png\" \/>&#160; <em><strong><u>Three<\/u><\/strong><\/em> call transfers later I got through to a helpful young lady who spoke perfect English (a rarity in the phone business) who told me that iPhones cannot be unlocked online.&#160; If only the site had been clear about that!&#160; She would start the process, I\u2019d get a text, and they\u2019d send me further instructions at that time.<\/p>\n<p>24 hours later I got the text with instructions.&#160; I also was emailed a word document with instructions.&#160; I\u2019ve copied\/pasted them here as evidence:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Connect the iPhone to iTunes (so much for the post-PC era, Apple!)<\/li>\n<li>Backup the iPhone<\/li>\n<li>Restore the iPhone<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/image5.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/image_thumb4.png\" width=\"604\" height=\"266\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At that point my iPhone would be magically unlocked.&#160; The text instructions were identical.&#160; I followed them to the letter \u2026 the locations of backup\/restore are moved in iTunes 11 into the phone status. I made sure to backup\/restore to\/from the computer.<\/p>\n<p>And there was no announcement that the phone was unlocked.&#160; Other than having another SIM handy, you cannot verify that it\u2019s unlocked.&#160; Hmm.&#160; I wanted verification.&#160; I searched online and found an Apple TS <a href=\"http:\/\/support.apple.com\/kb\/HT5014\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>.&#160; It says that you should do the following to reset the phone. This is the <em><strong><u>correct<\/u><\/strong><\/em> process:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1.Ensure that you&#8217;ve waited the recommended wait period provided by your carrier.     <br \/>2.Back up your iPhone.      <br \/>3.Erase the contents of your iPhone.      <br \/>4.Swap the old SIM card with the one for the new carrier.      <br \/>5.Complete the setup assistant and restore your backup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Huh!&#160; The Vodafone Ireland instructions didn\u2019t mention the phone reset; they went straight from backup to restore.&#160; I had thought that a bitt funny.&#160; I\u2019d already backed up the phone, so I did a reset (General \u2013&gt; Erase \u2013&gt; Erase All Content and Settings) with the phone connected by the USB lead to iTunes.&#160; I did the mini-setup on the phone and it asked if I wanted to restore the phone.&#160; Yes, please \u2026 and iTunes announced that my phone was unlocked.<\/p>\n<p>Remember \u2013 Apple\/your service provider must enable the unlock before this process will work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m moving networks, from Vodafone Ireland to 3 Ireland. My contract is finished, and if I get an upgrade phone with Vodafone, the price of the monthly bill will go up, and my monthly data allowance of 1GB will be halved.&#160; Three on the other hand, will give me a contract that is \u20ac5 cheaper &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=13974\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Unlocking  A Vodafone Ireland iPhone&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}