Firstly, phone unlocking is completely legal and won’t impact your warranty at all. Your network may have different policies on this but with because you aren’t changing the phone from the way the manufacturer intended the phone to be sold, the warranty with them is still in tact. Breaching this would be if you wanted to install a different software (also known as jailbreaking) as that is a change the manufacturer hadn’t intended you to do.
The networks are the ones who are able to place the locks on the phones and seeing as they aren’t the manufacturers, they can’t dictate a manufacturer warranty to them!
Unlocking a phone is actually a very simple thing to do in most cases. It use to be a lot harder, so if you have an older phone (5 years plus) then I’d consider looking on this page for the typical instructions that you’ll need http://www.unlockfaq.com/
The first thing you will need is an unlock code. You can get these from a site like http://www.mobileunlocked.co.uk/. To unlock your phone you will need an unlocking code or piece of software. For a site to locate your correct codes, they will need to know your IMEI. To get this just type this is your phone:
*#06#
A 15 digit number (sometimes 17 digits) will appear. Use that in the order form.
You will then receive your code by email and then you will need to follow these typical instructions below:
1. Insert a non-accepted SIM card 2. The phone will prompt you for the unlock code 3. Enter the unlock code and the phone will unlock
That is all there is to it (in most cases).
If for any reason your prompt doesn’t appear, I would suggest trying to make a phone call with the SIM card you have inserted. More often than not, this means that the phone is already unlocked.
