Saying bye bye to Orange

[Simon]

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood.  So you want to unlock your Orange phone to work on other networks?

[Technical Ben]

Yes, AFAIK they are not obliged to (in other countries it may be different). And it's poor service from them, but if they are chasing profit margins over actual work done, then they probably don't even have a system to provide you one.

[pctech]

Ah, think they can charge for those if they've not recovered their subsidy

[peasblossom]

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood.  So you want to unlock your Orange phone to work on other networks?

Yes.

[zappaDPJ]

I'd check here if you haven't already done so to see if you can unlock your phone for free: http://giffgaff.com/unlock

[peasblossom]

I have checked that Giff Gaff site (it's a handy resource whether you want to sign up to them or not) and while there is a way, it's not guaranteed to work or not break my phone. So I'd rather not.

[Technical Ben]

I'm braver. I had/have an old LG Cookie that was really playing up and kept dying. I tried a reset and everything, but I guess it may have been a hardware problem (loose connector on something?).
In a last ditch effort to fix it, I thought "Oh, I can just take out the inner battery, like the CMOS battery on a PC". Lesson learned, the equivalent bios/watch battery in the phone (strangely it did seem to have one) is soldered in. So I did not get it "back" on the board, or in working order.

No loss though, the phone was practically dead anyhow.

[pctech]

What phone are you trying to unlock anyway?