Nokia N8 on Virgin Mobile U.K

rayhipkiss

Hi there.

I have a Nokia N8-00 on a Virgin Mobile contract.
Does anybody know if it is un-lockable for free?
The reason I ask, is because I want to be able to receive Firmware updates direct from Nokia and not have to wait for Virgin to hack and slash the update before sending it on to their customers. Also, I've read that N8's that were sold SIM free ( and therefore pre un-locked ) have not suffered with some of the issues that locked phones are suffering with.

Thanks in advance,

Ray

jayme1

you're talking about debranding the phone which is totally different to unlocking the phone.

as of now as far as I know there is no easy way to change the product code to a debranded/direct form nokia code, in time there will be just like you can with every other nokia phone.

if your phone can use differnent network sim cards it is already unlocked/sim free, but not necessarily debranded.

debranding the phone means removing the networks custom firmware and putting on the 'stock' firmware if you were to buy one direct from nokia, obviously using any method to debrand it will void the warranty.

the only way to debrand a nokia n8 is very risky and there are many many post that people (even with experiance) have bricked their phones trying it, therefore I would strongly suggest holding off even trying to debrand until a safer way comes along.

rayhipkiss

Thanks for the info. All is a lot clearer now. I wasn't aware of the difference between de-branding and un-locking.
That's saved me trying to unlock my phone and not getting the intended benefit I was after.
The last thing I want to do is debrand it, and possibly rendering it useless.
Cheers.

Ray

JJ_Egan

Debranding is the act of removing the original vendors firmware and replacing it with the stock unbranded firmware .
Nokia issue the unbranded firmware that goes to the network/seller its customized and then put on the Nokia servers . Product code on individual phones ties that phone to a brand thats then downloaded .
Changing product code is possible and that would lead to the unbranded firmware .

jje