[General Questions and Answers] SPnewb:
I bought my first smart phone Samsung Gio S5660M and tried to unlock it. I tried different ways but weird things happened and I don’t know what causes the problem. I was wondering whether the unlock code would change if I did something to the phone. Now the phone is still locked and I really need and appreciate your help.

First I used the method in the link: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1204705 to root and unlock the phone but was not able to finish it. The steps that I have completed are as follows:

To root the phone:

1. Download this file http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jzvnlbhidsd5f6l

2. Copy root_gb_gio.zip to the root of the SD card and put the card in the phone

3. Shutdown the phone.

4. Put the phone in recovery Mode (press: Home button + Power button toghether)

5. In recovery mode, choose Install Update from SD-card using Vol. up / down key and press Home key to confirm

6. Search for the root_gb_gio.zip file on the SD-card and Press home key again to run the update

7. Reboot

8. Verify in the app folder if SuperUser app is installed properly

9. Reboot

Network Unlock (using ADB Shell from PC).

1. Download and install Samsung Kies to the PC from here: http://www.samsungapps.com/about/onPc.as, also install Samsung USB Driver

2. Download and install ADB which comes with Android SDK from: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

-Go to the "Available Packages" Option on the left Menu

-Click on the "Refresh" Button on the bottom Right and wait until it finish

-From Items select the "Andoid SDK platform-tools, revision 6" Item

-Click the "Install Selected" button on the botton right and wait until it finish then close the Android SDK

3. Add the correct path

-Right-click on Computer Icon (on your Desktop) and select "Properties" from the menu,

-On My PC Properties select the "Advanced Options" Tab

-Click "Advanced System Settings"

-Click "Environment Variables"

-Highlight the "Path" Variable and click the "Edit"

-At the end of the line (and path) add the path: ;C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools

4. Connect the phone to the computer via the USB cable

-Click on the start button and open the "Run" option, on Run type cmd.exe and press enter. A command prompt window popped out.

-Type the next text to access the ADB Shell: cd C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools

-Type: adb shell

-Now in adb shell (and executing commands on the phone itself)

-Type the next command: su

-The superuser application popped up on the PHONE SCREEN (yes take a look at the phone screen) asking to allow root privileges to the adb shell. Choose Allow root access for the ADB shell on the phone.

-Type: cd /

-Type : mount -o remount rw /

-Type: mkdir /efs

-Type: mount -o nosuid,ro,nodev -t vfat /dev/block/stl5 /efs

-Type: cat /efs/mits/perso.txt

got a bunch of characters on the screen and a 8 digit number, the unlock code, which is 28572603

-Type: unmount /efs (It should umount /efs, but I typed it wrong)

5. Disconnect the USB cable from the phone

6.Turn the phone off and insert the SIM card

7. Turn on the phone

In the last step it should ask for the unlock code to unlock the phone, however, it didn’t ask for the unlock code. Instead there was a message: “Phone is SIM Corporate Locked” and there is nowhere to input any code.

When I typed “*#7465625#, the result is as follows: Network Lock [OFF], Network Subset Lock [OFF], SP Lock [OFF], CP Lock [ON]. Note that the corporate lock is on. But I could access menu with the foreign SIM card in the phone. When I tried to dial “*#7465625*638*28572603” or “#0111*28572603” with or without foreign SIM card, the message is always something like network not available (cannot recall the exact words). When I went to a FIDO kiosk for help (SIM card is from FIDO), they told me to unroot the phone so that the phone could ask for the unlock code.

I googled corporate lock/SPCK code on the Internet and there is such message: “In 1% of cases to unlock samsung SPCK code is need”, I called Samsung for help with SPCK code. The technical support in Samsung asked me to factory reset the phone by typing “*2767*3855#”. After the reset, the status of the locks were still the same as before, so is the message “Phone is SIM Corporate Locked”. Then Samsung told me that they don’t have SPCK code. I noticed that SuperUser icon was still on the menu after the factory reset.

A further search showed the unlock method of mapping image partition from: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1244695 and http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=17148825&postcount=334 (same method). When I went to Shell and typed “su”, not sure whether because of the factory reset or not, superuser or admin denied, so I redid the rooting by following the previous steps, but it only took a few seconds to finish it. Then the steps I followed were:

1, first, go to the command line of pc.(win xp "start->run->cmd" )

and type "cd\", now in the root of the hard drive (also tried cd \Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools)

2, second, type "adb shell".

3, after that, type "su".

4, then, type "cat /dev/bml5>/sdcard/bml5.img"

5, type twice "exit" to disconnect with gio.

6, type "adb pull /sdcard/bml5.img"

But there is an error message “remote object /sdcar/bml5.img does not exist". I just repeated the steps a few minutes ago to get a few screenshots:

(using cd \Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools)

(using cd \)

(a different error: so I used mount command)

I think at this point (cannot recall after the following tries or at this time) that I inserted a foreign SIM card, the phone began to show message “Network Locked”, took out the foreign SIM card, typed “*#7465625#", weird enough, the result changed to: Network Lock [ON], Network Subset Lock [OFF], SP Lock [OFF], CP Lock [OFF]. Corporate lock is gone but the network lock came back. I don’t know the reason – is that because I did factory reset?

I put the foreign SIM card back to the phone, input the unlock code generated earlier “28572603”, but it was not successful. I decided to go back to the first method (ADB shell from PC) to generate the unlock code again to see whether the result code is the same. However, weird gain, this time no code at all. I reproduced the screenshot a moment ago for the result (I had to cut the screen into two half):

The third method I tried is to unlock the phone by using Android Terminal Emulator, the steps were:

- In Android Market, download and install Android Terminal Emulator

- Boot up the Android Terminal Emulator application

-Using the on-screen keyboard, type su, allowed the permission from the prompt

-Type: cd /

-Type : mount -o remount rw /

-Type: mkdir /efs

-Type: mount -o nosuid,ro,nodev -t vfat /dev/block/stl5 /efs

-Type: cat /efs/mits/perso.txt

The desire result should be a bunch of characters on the screen and a 8 digit number. However, I didn’t get the desire result – it seems that the result is the same as using the first method after factory reset, here is the screenshot (it seems that the shot is incomplete, but I had a hard time to get even such an incomplete shot – the shell would exit when I tried to screenshot):

My questions are: why the same method cannot generate the same code? Is it because I did something to the phone, like factory reset? The unlock code will change because of the situation or it will always keep the same? Why I cannot see the bml5.img? Is it possible I damaged it by chance? I am also worried that now even if I buy uncode code from GSMLiberty, it would not work any more because of what I did to the phone. Is it possible so? What is my option now? (I tried the code once, so I still have another two chances to input unlock code). Is what has happened weird or there is a reason for that?

Thank you very much.