@cappaj wrote:
Thanks - that was the initial thought in my PMs with the moderators, but it turns out that's not what that specific message was looking for.
But good news! I contacted Samsung support - and it turns out what I needed was a "master code". They gave me that number (different from Fido's unlock code and Public Mobile's PUK) and it worked! I then reverted to a screen asking for "SIM network unlock PIN" - which you would *think* is supposed to mean the Public Mobile PIN of 1234 - but it doesn't! It's actually asking for the previous carrier's unlock code (in my case, Fido) - I entered that and it's working now!!!!!!!!!
It's been a terribly frustrating two days, so excuse my excitement for solving this. I thought I'd share all that detail here, since from my googling I know that others have had this problem, but I never found this actual solution spelled out anywhere.
Thanks for the update.
Most of the time when people are talking about PUK, they are refering to the PUK of a sim card. This is because people sometimes experiment with the sim card secruity settings (such as making the phone ask for your sim card PIN every time you power up the phone). When someone goes into these settings, the phone will ask you to input your sim card's PIN. If someone tries guess the PIN incorrectly (which is set to 1234 by default for all Public Mobile sim cards unless someone changes it), the only way to use that sim card is to get the sim card's PUK.
For the network lock PUK, as you've already discovered, some phones have what they call an "unblock" code, different than the "unlock" code. When someone enters a wrong unlocking code too many times, the user is locked out of unlocking the phone. The unblock code simply resets the counter. It's great to hear that the unlock code then worked. Don't feel bad though because the wordings are so similar that unless you know your phone's software inside-out, it can be difficult to figure out which your phone is asking for.
