Thursday, 10 February 2011 05:57

Motorola Dext Unlocking

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A minor tech note for anyone else in this situation:  I recently bought a Motorola Dext MB200 Android phone, shipped from Canada, originally sold and locked to the carrier Bell.  It's a very nice device and I got it for a great price.  There are eBay vendors who sell unlock codes for well under $10 for most types of phone, and before buying this phone, I verified that was the case for the Dext.

 

So, it arrived today.  I chose an eBay vendor of unlock codes, supplied my IMEI and model, and in about an hour, I had an email with my "unlock code" inside.  Happily, and very cautiously, I entered the number... all 16 digits of it.  I was slow and cautious because most phones offer a limited number of unlock code attempts before perma-locking to their locked carrier.  I was saddened by a flash of an error message containing the word "unsuccessful" and a note that I had 7 remaining retries.  I spent the next couple of hours exploring other unlock options, looking at other unlock code vendors and seeing if those little SIM card overlays might work with a semi-modern Android phone (inconclusive).  Finally, I stumbled on a video of someone successfully entering an unlock code into their Canadian Motorola Dext.  I counted as the digits were entered.... 8 digits.  There was a space in the middle of the 16 digit code I received.  I risked one of my remaining tries on the first 8 digit half... and successfully unlocked the phone.  Nice conclusion.  I had actually asked the original vendor about the space in the code, but we had a language barrier.

 

TL;DR: Unlock codes for the Motorola Dext (at least Canadian version) are 8 characters in length.

Last modified on Friday, 10 January 2014 18:55