What is unlocking?

saver_natalie

I'm a little confused about the whole 'unlocking' thing.

Are phones locked to certain networks or to certain sims? Ie. if I have an old phone that was orange contract sim, can I put a new orange sim in it and it'll work or would I need to have it unlocked from the previous sim by contacting Orange or something? (Want to donate my phone to my dad)

Also, are really (really) old phones automatically unlocked - like the massive Philips bricks that came on BT Cellnet about 6 years ago if anyone remembers them. (Am thinking about using that as a temp. phone for porting purposes)

If someone could explain it all to me that'd be great.

Thanks.

kai666

Phones are locked to the network, so for example you could use any orange sim in any orange phone. Unlocking the phone will mean that any sim card can be used in a phone whatever the network. Sim cards are not locked, only the phone

phones don't automatically unlock after a time. The massive phillips bricks might not be compatible with new sims anyway. You would have to try an o2 sim as that is what BT cellnet became

saver_natalie

Thanks a lot. Understand the whole thing much better now!

redux

if the really old phone was on a Cellnet contract (not payg) it may not have been locked anyway, but it will be single band and only work with O2 and Vodafone networks - and the battery life will be a day at most