Unlocking my new HTC HD7

I thought I’d share my experience of unlocking an HTC HD7 handset, as I wanted to use it on other networks, here and abroad.

Background

Before getting my HTC HD7 phone, I had been a customer of Orange for years with various handsets and upgrades over the time. Literally, about 12 years, as  I took out a contract phone back in 1998 whilst at university.  My latest handset was the HTC TyTN II running Windows Mobile 6.0, which I loved, but had been waiting for the release of the Window Phone 7 and more importantly, the HTC HD7 handset.

To be honest, I would have stayed with Orange, except I really needed an HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 handset, but they were (and, currently, still are!) exclusive to O2 in the UK.

The HD7 era

Come December 2010, I couldn’t wait any longer and bought one on a Pay As You Go tariff, except I didn’t overly want the PAYG part; the O2 30-day contracts looked much more appealing, so I took a £20 per month contract plus a £5 bolt-on for internet access (I’m a geek!).

I wanted to keep my existing telephone number that I had for many years with Orange, and so went through the whole PAC code thing with Orange. To be honest, it could have been easier, but hey.

Status as of: This morning

At the time of writing this, my cherished telephone number has now been ported across onto the O2 30 Day Contract – I haven’t touched the PAYG one, as it was a waste of time.  Also, I’m still waiting for Orange to finish billing me, but they assure me that this is ‘normal’.

The next problem, is that O2 don’t really service the area where I live very well.  I’m not talking about internet connectivity, as I can use WiFi at home, but if I can make a telephone call from my house, that would be… nice.

So, I needed to change networks – but to who?  I decided to get a PAYG sim for another network and try it out before rushing into anything, and this is when I confirmed that the HTC HD7 was locked to O2. Big surprise? No.

I stumbled into the 3 (Three) shop today and bought myself a £10 top-up which comes with a free sim, and sure enough, the sim lock kicked in on the ol’ HD7, meaning that it is O2’s lock on the handset preventing other sim cards from being used.

IMEI ‘Unlocking’ Websites

Google quite helpfully found me lots of websites that, for between £20 and £40 (GBP) they could unlock my handset. Yeah right.

Despite my efforts, none of the websites even worked, let alone getting me through to the shopping basket.  Even so, this all seemed far too dodgy, and so I thought I’d call O2 themselves and see if they can do it. Properly. Even for money.

Calling O2

I was expecting O2 to say ‘no, naff orf’, when asked about unlocking my handset, but interestingly, they didn’t.  The chap on the phone did have to speak to someone else, and later explained that if I were to be using the original PAYG sim that came with the HD7 handset, then O2’s official stance was that I needed to have waited 12 months before they’ll allow me to unlock it for use on other networks.

Luckily, my ‘saving grace’, was that I wasn’t using the PAYG sim that came with the phone; I was using a 30-day contract sim from O2.  This meant that they could unlock my handset for me, and for free too!

I had to give them the IMEI number and within about an hour, I had an email back from the guys at O2 with the eight-digit unlock code for the handset.  I simply had to stick the new Three sim into the phone, turn it on, wait for the O2 sim lock and enter the code, and we’re in.  And I didn’t have to pay a penny more. Job done.