[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Skello:
GSM GN comes network-locked in multiple countries. For example, until just recently, the only company importing GN in Romania was Vodafone Romania. All their devices came network-locked on Vodafone, but in order to accommodate local resellers who wanted to sell the phone unlocked, Vodafone performed a temp unlock by modifying the nv_data.bin in radio, but not the one in factory.

Because of this, after a reset to factory defaults, users who bought the phones as unlocked from a local reseller were suddenly receiving the "enter network PIN" message. This resulted in a lot of people returning their GN phones to the stores. It was also my case and it sucks to pay for an unlocked phone and not be able to use it.

The situation has started to change recently, as an increasing number of resellers have started to stock GN directly from Samsung Romania and not from Vodafone.

The issue is not limited to Vodafone and Romania. I've seen similar complaints from customers of Vodafone Australia and GN users in France. So yeah, it's safe to say that GSM GN DOES come locked to specific networks in certain countries.

---------- Post added at 03:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 PM ----------

I confirm the problem, but my situation was a bit different. I didn't have an already unlocked GN with generic IMEI. I had a new, 4.0.4 stock ROM, GN network-locked to Vodafone Romania with proper IMEI. Here is what I did:

1. Used the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit to unlock bootloader and root the phone.

2. Installed ****DocomoV3 and attempted permanent unlock.

3. The phone rebooted not two, but three times and still had proper IMEI. However, at this point I had no SIM card in the phone so I wasn't getting the "enter network PIN" anyway. I didn't know how to check the unlock status except by inserting a SIM and checking, but I was lazy and I thought that if I attempt an unlock again and the phone is already unlocked, ****DocomoV3 will perform a check first and alert me if the phone is already unlocked. Seems reasonable, right?

4. Well that didn't happen, FDv3 started the process again, the phone rebooted only once and then I got a "FDv3 stopped working" message. I attempted multiple manual reboots. Same message. This time I put my SIM card in and indeed it was unlocked, but when I checked the IMEI, it was a generic one. Not the 000 (missing IMEI one), but a generic one.

5. I used FDv3 to re-lock the phone. It locked it back and showed proper IMEI.

6. Uninstalled FDv3. Installed it back and attempted perm unlock again. Unlocked worked, but same "FDv3 stopped working" message and generic IMEI.

7. Since the phone was unlocked now, but only the IMEI was wrong, I followed the steps in Jup's Grand Theory of Permanent SIM Unlock and fixed the MD5s in factory manually.

8. Permanently unlocked phone with proper IMEI.

So yeah, if you're using FDv3 on a locked phone that has never been unlocked before, it might work. However, if you're coming from FDv2 or attempt multiple unlocks with FDv3, something breaks somewhere in the process and you will get generic IMEI and will have to follow Jup's instructions manually. Hope mrx can figure out where the bug is and address it.

Also, mrx, if you're reading this, please add an option to check if the phone is already unlocked in the app. If it's not too much trouble. Either way, great work with the app. Thanks.