[Moto G7 Power Questions & Answers] geese7en:
Hi!

Summary:

Everything works fine except the phone network. Any SIM card I try I get a “SIM network unlock request unsuccessful”.

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Questions:

Q1) Is there a sure way to figure out if my phone is network locked of if there is a hardware problem? With fastboot, adb, special codes… whatever (but a scam unlock website). Can I somehow see for sure if there is a network lock present? Or probe hardware to report an error?

Q2) Can you help me please? Is there anything else to try? Please read the details below to see what I already tried.

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The detailed story:

I recently bought a Moto G7 Power (XT1955-4) from an Ebay seller from England. The phone was sold as new and unlocked and the packaging and phone condition didn’t seem to contradict that.

Without testing it I went straight into “customizing”.

1.) I updated the installed factory OS, until it reported there were no new updates available.

2.) I unlocked the bootloader via official code request. Everything went fine.

3.) I started flashing LineageOS (nightly lineage-18.1-20220212) as described it the official guide.

a) flashing lineage didn’t go through well (some warnings)

sudo fastboot flash boot lineage-18.1-20220212-recovery-ocean.img
(bootloader) is-logical:boot_a: not found
Sending 'boot_a' (21104 KB) OKAY [ 0.527s]
Writing 'boot_a' (bootloader) Image not signed or corrupt
OKAY [ 0.134s]
Finished. Total time: 0.839s

I tried with an updated fastboot as suggested by the official guide and by trying boot_a, boot__a. Nothing changed.

b) I opted for booting into TWRP

sudo fastboot boot twrp-3.5.2_10-0-ocean.img

which worked fine, and I sideloaded lineage-18.1-20220212-nightly-ocean-signed.zip from there

sudo adb sideload lineage-18.1-20220212-nightly-ocean-signed.zip

All good.

c) I did the suggested “partitions copy”

sudo adb sideload copy-partitions-20210323_1922.zip

Went fine.

4.) Booted into OS fine, nothing unusual. (btw, OS seems to be installed in the “b” ~slot/partition)

5.) Inserted the SIM card, entered my PIN and it “accepted” it.

I then realized that there was a “no network” icon, and after a few moments I got prompted for the PIN again:

“SIM network unlock PIN”

After entering the (correct) PIN and pressing “unlock” I got an error saying

“SIM network unlock request unsuccessful”.

Tried several times, with different SIM cards, always the same. These SIM cards work fine in other phones.

Everything else on the phone seems to work fine – wireless, bluetooth, gps, camera etc.

6.) I then did a “rescue” with the Lenovo’s “Rescue and Smart assistant” software.

View attachment 5540403

It booted back to the official ROM, seemingly without any problems.

BUT the problem remains the same – everything works, but the phone network. Same PIN prompt and error (worded slightly differently).

7.) I tried an earlier LineageOS version, the same result.

8.) I found and tried a suggestion where I flashed some specific files over from the official image:

(I used XT1955-4_OCEAN_RETEU_10_QPOS30.52-29-7-6_cid50_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC.xml)

fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin
fastboot erase modemst1
fastboot erase modemst2
fastboot flash fsg fsg.mbn
fastboot erase cache

Procedure went fine (no errors), but no changes in the problematic behavior. Perhaps the image was not the right version? Anyway I wasn’t really sure what I was doing in this procedure to be honest.

9.) I called the network provider but they were super unhelpful (as usual) and they don’t care.

I called up local repair shops, but they only deal with “cracked screens”... :)

10.) I did try setting the phone to manual network selection and it showed a list of all three local networks, but I couldn’t “join” them as previously described.

(see my questions above the detailed description)

Thanks for reading/helping out!