[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jefft92264:
So in May of 2015 i purchased on Amazon a new Volt 2 to be used on Virgin Mobile with a yet to be established accoung. The next day my Mom surprised me by giving me her old Samsung and added me to her phone plan. The following week when The Volt 2 arrived, it got lost in the shuffle and instead of returning the phone, it got tossed in a closet... unopened... never activated... And no account opened with Virgin.

4 years later, a friend who is down on his luck just lost his cell phone. He doesnt have the money to replace it because he was laid off 2 weeks ago. I offered to put him on my plan with sprint becuase the plan i have is so cheap to add a line and figured i would give him my stashed Volt 2 since it's a CDMA phone and should work on Sprints network.... If life was only that easy.

When i went to check the IMEI number on Sprints site, it came back with a message that said something to the effect that the phone qualified but i had to bring in to a Sprint store to activate it. Just to protect myself i called Virgin and asked if the phone was locked and explained the whole situation to her. She looked up my IMEI and claimed there were no holds on the phone and shouldnt have a problem bringing it to sprint. i asked her to triple check that information which she did and assured me all would be ok with Sprint...

i go to Sprint the next day to add my line and though they didnt say it was locked, i was told i just couldnt use the device on their network. So before i esculate this issue with Sprint I decided when I got home to call virgin again and make 100% sure my device has no holds are on it anwhewre.... carrier hold, sim hold, device hold, any hold.. The tell me nothings wrong with it. In all honesty, I never told them on the phone that I never activated activated the device, as I assumed they would of seen that.

I put a request in with sprint to provision the phone to its network and the rep didn't seem to see why she couldn't they said it would take 72 hours and I'd get am email with the outcome. It's been 8 days no email.

I'm sure the problem is that I didn't have service on the phone for the required 12 months in order to get the carrier unlock restriction.... Obviously the fact that the phone hasn't been activated is what's messing up everyone's view if the device. It has no phone number, no account to tie it too and under the system under bootloader there's nothing there it blank. The phone starts up fine, i can connect to my wifi and use it just fine. But under settings there's no network associated to it and most everything is blank. I put a correct sim sprint card in and it says invalid sim. It tries authorizing and fails. It on every reboot it tries to activate and eventually fails. It will download update, but fails with an authentication error when rebooting and installing. Phones not rooted or hacked (yet). And I've looked into the unlock companies out there and told if I can't get the phone yo ask for an unlock code when putting another sim card in, then there's nothing they can do... I can't get it to do that, no matter what shortcut / hidden menu option I try. In fact even *#06# (or variation thereof) won't pull um the imei number. It's listed in the settings. But I wonder if the fact that it's not asking for an unlock code when changing SIMS is because it's not activated anywhere. But if I activate it, will a lock be put on it immediately? And why are they locking phones 4 years old... Come on.

So is this phone just junk unless I want to pay $40 a month to Virgin for a year? On a phone that's 4 years old?

For the record I posted a message on vigin communities message board not giving IMEI number and said I'd supply it through an PM if requested and I was simply replied to with the staple "phone must be activated on our network for 12 months" line.

i hate throwing away any electronics especially ones ive never used. Is that my only option if I want to use the phone anywhere else other than virgin?

Sorry for the long winded posting...i couldn't find a decent answer anywhere on Google when searching if can you unlock a phone that's never been activated.

Help. :)