How to unlock Nokia cell phone

You can unlock your cell phone yourself, No phonecall, No tool, and No cost.

My AT&T Nokia phone got soaked and died. I do not want to order a new phone from AT&T since I do not two more years' contract. I had an old T-mobile Nokia 6010 phone and want to temporarily use my T-mobile Nokia phone in AT&T network. I knew I had to unlock the phone. Initially I thought T-mobile local store should do it for me for free. I visited 3 local stores and neither of them will do it for me. One employee of T-mobile asked me to try the luck at a third-party vendor called Mobile Kangaroo. Mobile Kangaroo indeed offers the unlock service, but asks $20 for it.

I decided to try to unlock it myself first. It turned out it is a very easy task, at least for Nokia phone. If you have the instruction, you can do it in 10 minutes, no phonecall, no tool, and no cost.

I got the instruction from http://www.unlock.it/nokia, which we should thank a lot! That website also has instruction about unlocking iphone, sony erricsson, samsung, LG, and siemens.

Here is the instruction.

0) Remove your inactive SIM card from the phone. In my case, I threw away my T-mobile SIM card.

1) Find your phone's IMEI number. You can get it using either of the following two methods. a) type *#06# on your cell phone. b) turn off your cell phone, take out the battery, and find IMEI number.

2) Input IMEI number on http://www.unlock.it/nokia.

3) Select the phone model. In my case, it is 6010.

4) Select the country. In my case, it is USA.

5) Select the network. In my case, it is T-mobile.

6) Input the website security code and you get unlock code.

7) Try code 1 first. If it does not work, try code 7. In my case, code 1 does not work for me. Code 7 works! A example code is #pw+797240627504446+4#

8) Input code in your phone. The tricky part is how to input some characters. Here is how to input some special characters (you find every other characters on keypad directly):
p: click * key 3 times quickly in less than 1 minute, you will get p
w: click * key 4 times quickly in less than 1 minute, you will get w
+: click * key 2 times quickly in less than 1 minute, you will get +

9) Then put your active SIM card (in my case, AT&T SIM card) in your unlocked phone (in my case, T-mobile phone) and turn it on. If you are not asked for restricted code, mission accomplished! Otherwise, go back to step 7 and try other unlock code.