[Synthetic42]

Maybe that's changed, my old flatmate had his (Originally Orange) locked phone replaced twice, and neither of the replacements were locked to Orange like the original he got from Orange. This was back in the 4/4S days though, maybe they link/move/copy the IMEI to whatever database keeps track of what IMEI is locked to what network when they do the exchange or something along those lines?

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

The iPhone was originally bought from Three and was locked. She took it to the Apple store to deal with the fault and the gave her a new one. Tired my O2 Sim in it but it was locked to Three.

That makes total sense, then - Apple can obviously change the lock status of any phone as they want, and they aren't going to keep O2/3/VF/Orange/T-Mobile/Tesco/whatever phones separately in stock in stores, they'll keep one stock of phones and just copy the lock status from the old one when they are replaced

Stuff like the Apple SIM are an evolution of this - they want to be able to sell you an iPhone and you can chop and change network provider as you wish

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

The iPhone was originally bought from Three and was locked. She took it to the Apple store to deal with the fault and the gave her a new one. Tired my O2 Sim in it but it was locked to Three.

The replacement would have been programmed to exactly the same lock status as the handset being exchanged, they do it as part of the exchange process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Synthetic42

Maybe that's changed, my old flatmate had his (Originally Orange) locked phone replaced twice, and neither of the replacements were locked to Orange like the original he got from Orange. This was back in the 4/4S days though, maybe they link/move/copy the IMEI to whatever database keeps track of what IMEI is locked to what network when they do the exchange or something along those lines?

The system has always worked as I mention above, the original that was replaced must have been unlocked at some stage.

[tayorous]

You can ask O2 but I dont think that they'll do it, I would recommend going to a phone store or something that does unlocking.

[Gigabit]

I had my iPhone 3G on O2 unlocked by O2 and I had it replaced three times. All of the replacements were unlocked: they never re-locked.

I had an iPhone 4 from Apple directly and I used that with multiple SIMs: it did not lock itself. The same happened with the 4S and 5S.

Then I got tired of iOS and went to Android.

[davethorp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

No Apple do stock iPhones that will Auto Lock. My other half had a faulty iPhone a few years ago so they gave her a replacement and it locked itself to Three. I tried another Sim in it to test it and it was locked right enough.

Genius Bar replacements will inherit the lock status or unlocked status of the handset they are replacing

[My name's Scott]

Why the hell do you guys get your phones replaced so often. I've never had an iPhone replaced.

[Widdy]

I used these people and it was unlocked within 4 days: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1915486994...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT