UNLOCKED SPRINT GALAXY S4 WON’T DETECT SIM CARD

UNLOCKED SPRINT GALAXY S4 WON’T DETECT SIM CARD

We give you another post that answers some questions sent to us by our readers about their #GalaxyS4. If you want to look for more Galaxy S4 troubleshooting, don’t forget to visit this page.

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UNLOCKED SPRINT GALAXY S4 WON’T DETECT SIM CARD

I gave my phone to someone to unlock it from Sprint for me. I got it back from him and he advised me to download Samsung Kies and do a final update through it. I did that and when I place the SIM card from my family mobile phone into it, it says invalid SIM and it says “System Update” on the notification bar on the top. I go to update system and it says it is up to date. What do I need to do to finish up this process of getting the device to accept my family mobile SIM?

BTW, I’m not going through Sprint to have them unlock it because they say I owe them $800. I could buy a new phone for that. Also, when I select UICC unlock, update profile, and update PRL, it says “initializing application”, that disappears and nothing ever happens. — Julian

Solution: Hi Julian. If you have the phone unlocked via third party, you must go back to them for assistance regarding this problem. Either the phone is not truly unlocked, or they did not do it properly.

There are two ways to unlock phones. One is by asking your carrier (in your case Sprint) to give you the unlock code, and the other is by getting help from a third party. The first option is obviously out of question as you’re not willing to pay your remaining balance with Sprint. Now, the problem is that your phone won’t detect your SIM card. This means that either the phone has not been unlocked, or that your device is not simply unable to connect with the towers of your new service provider. Unlocking a phone does not change its hardware and won’t actually help if your device is designed to work with a certain band frequency only. Wireless carriers use assigned frequency in order to provide service. For example, we know that Sprint operates a nationwide CDMA network in the 1900 MHz PCS band together with other specific bands. Your S4 was specifically designed to work within these frequency ranges. Unlocking it doesn’t mean it can now connect to, say, Verizon’s 850 MHz or 700 MHz Block C frequency bands.

Either that or the unlocking process was amiss in the first place. Make sure you ask assistance from the party that unlocked the phone to shed more light on the matter.