How to: Unlock your iPhone with SAM

THIS METHOD NO LONGER WORKS AS OF  Apr.28, 2012; activation records will remain valid for three years from the day of activation.

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I thought the IMSI unlock saga is done and dusted but apparently there are more to it. All credit goes to Loktar_Sun from weiphone.com who pursued an earlier lead that many, yours truly included, have gave up as a viable exploit.

What do you need: A jailbroken iPhone that can be activated in iTunes (that is, not officially blacklisted), a computer with the latest iTunes installed and working internet connection.  You will also need to know the carrier that your iPhone is locked to.

1. Step one: Install Sam Bingner's SAM (Subscriber Artificial Module) package. I recommend that you get it from repo.bingner.com since older versions have a different interface and may not work for this purpose.

2. Enter SAM by either going through the settings menu or find the SAMPrefs icon on your springboard. You will need to have the SIM card you intend to use in your phone.

3. Go to utilities and select "De-Activate iPhone", your ActivationState under "More Information" should now be "Unactivated"

4. With SAM enabled, choose "By Country and Carrier" in "Method"; find your carrier, for some carriers operating more than one Carrier ID you may need to select "SIM ID"; easy to tell since iTunes will not activate if the wrong IMSI is selected.

5. Go to More Information", copy or write down the IMSI in "SAM Details", then tap "Spoof Real SIM to SAM".

6. Go back to the main SAM screen and change your "Method" to manual. Paste or enter the IMSI string we saved in Step 5. 

7. Connect your iPhone to your computer and allow iTunes to do its job (namely re-activating your phone), double click "Phone Number" parameter at the main device screen and make sure that the ICCID matches that of your SIM card. If not you need to start over from Step 1.

8. Unplug your phone, close iTunes.

9. Disable SAM. The source article says to uninstall SAM and delete your lockdownd folders; it's unnecessary.

10. Connect your phone to iTunes again, you should get an error saying that your phone cannot be activated. This is normal. Just close iTunes and open it again.

11. You should see signal bars in a short time, congratulations.

12. Push notifications may stop working after this procedure but can be easily restored with "clear push" utility in SAM followed by connecting to iTunes.

Your phone will work normally with your SIM card and that SIM card ONLY since we have tricked iTunes to think that ICCID is one of the intended carrier's. The phone can be rebooted and connected to iTunes freely without losing the "unlock", at least for now.

Since it does not involve emergency numbers or IMSI spoofing it will not have any of the issues associated with SIM interposers. Tested working on iOS 5.01 but should work with tethered 5.1 too.

And could I forget about Chage and Aska?

Imprinted in my head, literally

Easter Summary

Friday: Went to Long Bay for a casual barbeque/walk on the beach. Did not have enough meat to go around so ended up eating grilled ham slices and grilled bananas. After that a friend was nice enough to offer a tour of his new house and a ride in his ice cream van (Literally, he no longer need to earn his living but still scoops ice cream 3 days a week purely for the laughs. I'd love to do this after my retirement in, er, 40 years)

Saturday: Fatigued from yesterday so stayed inside to watch South Park and Nisemonogatari. A headache inevitably developed and got worse after dinner. Slept from 8pm to midnight under the influence of ibuprofen.

Sunday: Unable to go back to sleep so decided to do an allnighter. Attempted to start composing my literature review but ended up looking at random photo collections on cracked.com. Washed my lab coat and canvas bags before discovering that I had ran out of bleach; went all the way to the supermarket without realising it was sabbathEaster Sunday. And no, there was no high nor crash following that thanks to my messed up sleeping cycle.

Piled Higher and Deeper, the xkcd especially for graduate students

Monday: Drove to the old house to mow the lawn, boring except the part when I had to mentally calculate a 2 stroke mixture

Sorry but no photos, I was way too relaxed and perhaps lazy for it.

Anyway thanks for reading, at least there will be a (good-ish) song in the end as a reward.



P.S. I have always meant to catch up on viewing Guren Lagann but did it reallt come out in 2007? Unbelievable.