Unlocking E100

[Guest mattscholey]

Hi,

Read a few posts on this topic, most of which from people who tried to SIM unlock their phone and it all went wrong.

I've got an SPV E100, out of the box, no changes to the bootloader, etc (just de-certified). What is the reccommended way of downgrading the bootloader, as I understand the update program doesn't work on an E100.

How should I downgrade it? Then I assume I should use this Update.exe program you get when you click on SIM Unlock. Are there any risks with any of it, or anything I should be careful of?

If it all goes wrong, will Orange Care cover it?

Thanks, as I'm a bit concerned about doing this.

Matt

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

What you need to do is downgrade the bootloader from V1.00 to V0.98, most people do this by running the UK update. There does seem to be a problem with newer E-100's tyhough, where you can get stuck on the sunset screen. The only way to fix this is to run a newer update, but

there is not an official one released by Orange.

After you have managed to get the V0.98 update then you can run the unlock app to give you your code.

At the end of the day this can invalidate your warranty.

[Guest Lordsmiff]

I rushed into this head first without reading everything properly (not that it would have made that much difference :wink: )

Anyway, the best way from what I've read is to back up your current bootloader to an SD card, find someone with an SPV with an older bootloader, back their's up onto another SD card, put their's on your phone, get the code, put yours back.

*phew*

Or, you can do what I did - put the 1.3.5 update on your phone, panic slightly when it won't boot any more, say what the hell, i'll worry about that in a bit, get the code, put the iMate ROM on and then SIM unlock it.

You might not get the nice orange sunset when booting anymore (or orange backup, update, gprs settings, blah blah ;) ) but you do get the IA Album, it still works, it's app unlocked, very stable, SMS counter works, english T9 and...well, you can read all that elsewhere :)

Just no warranty anymore...

Oh well ;-)

T.

[Guest Lordsmiff]

Oh, and there's the possibility apparently that the next orange update won't work on your phone...

I'm not sure if that's for definite yet but it may be something that would worry you and if it is, think carefully before putting a "foreign" ROM on your phone :)

T.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Oh, and there's the possibility apparently that the next orange update won't work on your phone...

From what I've seen so far this is more likely to be just a rumour

[Guest Lordsmiff]

I would hope so but for some people, I'm sure it's a case of "better safe than sorry"

TBH, unless the new update has some stonking new feature, I'll probably stick with the iMate one as I'm having *no* problems with it at all - and if working in computers for 10 years has taught me anything it's don't fix what isn't broken :)

T.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

working in computers for 10 years has taught me anything it's don't fix what isn't broken ;)

Just tweak it until it is :)

[Guest Lordsmiff]

:)

That's *so* true ;)

T.