Last week, when my boss came back from abroad he brought with him an Android phone for me! Yes, T-Mobile’s G1, a white one. I was very happy to know that I finally  had my hands on the phone I was waiting for for so long but in no time at all my happiness was ripped away. I was handed the phone and he said,  play around with it and write some interesting content on it. I took the phone and ran to my cubical in excitement. The first thing I did was to show the phone to my colleague Jai, the person who got an iPhone a few months ago. He rarely allows me to touch his phone. He wanted to touch the T-Mobile G1 but I didn’t let him!

So I switched on the phone to see what Android really looks like. After booting, I got a message “No SIM Card” so I grabbed the iPhone from Jai’s table (without him seeing) and took out his SIM card and inserted it into the G1 and switched it on.  After booting, the phone asked me either to create a Google account or enter my existing Google ID to setup the phone soI entered my Google ID and password and tapped on the sign-in button. I waited for several minutes and was finally greeted with an error message “There is a problem communicating with the Google Servers. This could be a temporary problem or your SIM card may not be provisioned for data services. If it continues, call Customer care”. Soon I realized that I need a T-Mobile data transfer activated SIM to setup my phone but unfortunately, in the country where I am located, there is no T-Mobile service.

What a disappointment – to finally have an Android phone in my hot hand but not able to use it. I told my boss that the phone he gave me is not activated and he promised me that the he’ll fix the issue soon. But I didn’t give up and start digging the Internet to find out a solution for unlocking the restriction imposed by T-Mobile. I have found many ways to unlock the phone and the most well known way to do it is to buy an unlock code. Another way is to borrow the SIM card of a friend who has a T-Mobile SIM with the data service activated. Neither of those options suited me. It looked hopeless.

Then I thought of connecting my device to a Wi-Fi network so that the phone can get a data transfer service, but it was no use! Each time I press the Home button on the phone, it gives an option to setup the APN for the phone. So I called my service provider and asked them the details of the APN setting for my existing SIM card. They gave me the details and I replaced the existing T-Mobile’s APN values with the new one but still I couldn’t setup the phone!. After several fruitless efforts I finally put the precious phone in the drawer, for now. If you know any way tounlock the phone, please post itin the comment section of this post.