Unlock your iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS on iOS 5.01
A new way to unlock iPhones has been discovered by Loktar_Sun using Sam Bingner’s SAM (Subscriber Artificial Module) method. The SAM package was originally used to officially activate an iPhone without a stock SIM card, but Loktar_Sun was able to modify it to unlock jailbroken iPhones.
This method will work with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G on iOS 5, 5.0.1 and 5.1 that have been jailbroken. Many people have confirmed the SAM method to work without any issues including @MuscleNerd and Sam Binger. Sam also confirms that he has plans to include this unlock using a simpler interface.
Here are instructions for unlocking your jailbroken iPhone using the SAM method.
Step 1. Install Sam Bingner’s SAM (Subscriber Artificial Module) package. I recommend that you get it from repo.bingner.com since older versions have a different interface and may not work for this purpose.
Step 2. Enter SAM by either going through the settings menu or find the SAMPrefs icon on your springboard. You will need to have the SIM card you intend to use in your phone.
Step 3. Go to utilities and select “De-Activate iPhone”, your ActivationState under “More Information” should now be “Unactivated”
Step 4. With SAM enabled, choose “By Country and Carrier” in “Method”; find your carrier, for some carriers operating more than one Carrier ID you may need to select “SIM ID”; easy to tell since iTunes will not activate if the wrong IMSI is selected.
Step 5. Go to More Information”, copy or write down the IMSI in “SAM Details”, then tap “Spoof Real SIM to SAM”.
Step 6. Go back to the main SAM screen and change your “Method” to manual. Paste or enter the IMSI string we saved in Step 5.
Step 7. Connect your iPhone to your computer and allow iTunes to do its job (namely re-activating your phone), double click “Phone Number” parameter at the main device screen and make sure that the ICCID matches that of your SIM card. If not you need to start over from Step 1.
Step 8. Unplug your phone, close iTunes.
Step 9. Disable SAM. The source article says to uninstall SAM and delete your lockdownd folders; it’s unnecessary.
Step 10. Connect your phone to iTunes again, you should get an error saying that your phone cannot be activated. This is normal. Just close iTunes and open it again.
Step 11. You should see signal bars in a short time, congratulations.
Step 12. Push notifications may stop working after this procedure but can be easily restored with “clear push” utility in SAM followed by connecting to iTunes.
MuscleNerd also recommends saving your BBTicket after unlocking your iPhone.