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Straight talk will not unlock your phone

Jul 27, 2016 10:21AM PDT

I am a low income person because of disability. I bought a straight talk phone to activate only when I travel. I just qualified for a free phone. They sent me a phone that is so bad it only holds a charge for 8 hours. They will transfer the service to any phone. I took the straight talk phone to Walmart and they were very rude and said "We don't unlock phones here". When I called straight talk, they hung up on me the first time. I called back and they told me that since I hadn't used the phone continuously for a yeàr, they would not unlock it. If anyone knows how to unlock a Samsung S380C, please let me know.

Discussion is locked

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My iPhone only gets 4 hours now.
Jul 27, 2016 10:51AM PDT

So you have a better battery time than mine!

And if this is some CDMA phone, there is never an unlock. It confounds folk but for those you have your new carrier move the phone to their system. That's not unlocking is it?

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1785087-OFFICIAL-Samsung-S380C-CDMA finds it is CDMA and my advice is to stop asking for unlocks. CDMA is different and if you keep asking, folk can get tired and you may get upset.

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Why ......
Jul 28, 2016 4:12PM PDT

.... do you need to unlock the phone ??? Are you trying to use it on another cellular network ??

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That's a fair question
Jul 28, 2016 4:39PM PDT

But CDMA doesn't unlock. You can only move it to a new carrier. It's different from GSM and folk that ask for unlocks get very upset over the technology differences.

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They have an unlock department.
Jul 28, 2016 8:48PM PDT

Straight Talk confirmed that my phone is locked. They have an unlock department.

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Definitions.
Jul 29, 2016 8:53AM PDT

For CDMA locked means something different than our GSM models. The CDMA ecosystem has carriers check a database to see if they are allowed to move a CDMA phone onto their network. This is different from the GSM phones where an unlocked phone means you just pop in a SIM and you're done.

So if this phone is "subsidized" then the carrier its locked to will not release it until the end of the contract. This area is deep and upsets many folk.

Remember it's so well discussed that what I write here is a summary only.