Unlocked my Motorola Defy

Locked phone!

I have a 3yr-old Motorola Defy, and recently upgraded to another model. This Defy came from Personal (carrier in Argentina), and I wanted to use it with a SIM from a different carrier (Claro). When I put that SIM card... a message would ask for "Pin de desbloqueo de red de la tarjeta SIM".

The phone was usable (apps, wifi), but no mobile signal was picked.


Tried PUK code, known short PINs, asked the subsidy password to my carrier, and nothing worked.

(Interestingly enough: Unlike other people's experiences, I phoned Personal and after verifying I am the owner of the phone, they just gave me the subsidy password in a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, it did not work with my phone).

I suspect the code did not work out of the box because my phone was re-flashed long ago, I had installed Cyanogenmod 9 to get Android 4.x.

System Settings / version

I tried some "baseband selector" but this did not help. I think this option is the same thing available in Cyanogenmod options menu -- you just select the frequencies, but the phone is still locked.

So after looking for hours (days), I found one solution based on installing some update from the recovery menu. I had not used this for a long time so it was all fun and scary... again.

The source is this 51-pages forum in XDA. The solution uses a file named ICS_Defy_softunlock_v1.3(EPU_U_00.59.01).zip, and it is called a "soft unlock". I am documented what worked for me:

Pre-requisites:

• To flash CM9, I had already rooted and installed 2nd-init. I did this long ago, and it is the only actual requisite.
• I had CM9 previously installed - so the "ICS" version of the patch worked for me (and not GB for Gingerbread). I believe both CM7 and CM9 work.
• As shown in my System Settings page, my base band version is EPU93_U_00.59.01, exactly what this soft unlock requires. If yours is different, you may need to install the baseband update as well (from the same XDA forum).

Steps:

1. Reboot in Recovery mode

   

   Shutdown menu / recobe

2. Select "Install zip from SD card" and "Choose zip from sdcard"
   
   
3. Pick the ICS_Defy_softunlock_v1.3(EPU_U_00.59.01).zip file and confirm.
4. Reboot your phone without SIM card (or with the original one -- not the target carrier SIM!)
5. Once fully rebooted, power off, insert new SIM card, and start the phone again.
   
   It worked for me! The screenshot shows the phone in Claro network now.

Working with new SIM

I read that this, being a "software unlock", is not persistent across ROM changes. So if I ever replaced the current CM9 in this phone, I might need to do this patching again.... Hopefully this blog post will help me at that time!

Thanks xdadevelopers!