Unlock inherited iPhone 6?

[cahlton]

So my dad died in Boston about 18 months ago. Hadn't lost a parent before, and it was fairly shattering. Only recently were my brother and I ready to go through my dad's stuff.

Among the things I ended up with was his iPhone 6, which my wife and I figured we'd give to our daughter. The phone was locked to the carrier, as it turned out—I could get into it, but it wouldn't accept another SIM card. Neither of the methods I tried to unlock it have worked. Apple told me that only the carrier can unlock the phone. The carrier, AT&T, told me that the account had been closed so long ago that it no longer existed in their file system.

So we have this perfectly good phone that is unusable. The two options I know of are going to a phone place where they unlock phones, but my understanding is that those places have to call the carrier as well, which means they'll encounter the same obstacle I did. The other option is jailbreaking. I'm not tech-savvy enough to do it without downloading a program, and I don't want to completely open up this phone to a piece of unknown software. Are there alternatives to jailbreaking? If not, can anyone recommend the jailbreaking program that is the least likely to destroy the phone or upload any malware to it?

 

[cgori]

First off, condolences on the passing of your father.

Who is your mobile provider? I'm guessing it's not AT&T? If you brought this phone to an AT&T plan, I almost guarantee they could figure out the unlock. They're sort of giving you the run-around with the "not in our system" thing - they have the lock on the phone so it's in there somewhere - your dad presumably was paid up on his bill ~18 months ago which isn't very long ago, from a retention standpoint. I would basically try again at AT&T and see if you can get someone a bit more sympathetic to do some digging for you.

The phone places won't likely be able to unlock your phone, almost for sure, it's carrier-based as you expect.

I don't know much about the state of jailbreaking. It will depend almost entirely on what version of iOS is on that phone.

Note: that phone is about to go end-of-life, sometime in 2023 Apple will completely stop supporting it, I believe. It's capped at iOS 12 for sure though, which is pretty old.

 

[cahlton]

First off, condolences on the passing of your father.

Who is your mobile provider? I'm guessing it's not AT&T? If you brought this phone to an AT&T plan, I almost guarantee they could figure out the unlock. They're sort of giving you the run-around with the "not in our system" thing - they have the lock on the phone so it's in there somewhere - your dad presumably was paid up on his bill ~18 months ago which isn't very long ago, from a retention standpoint. I would basically try again at AT&T and see if you can get someone a bit more sympathetic to do some digging for you.

The phone places won't likely be able to unlock your phone, almost for sure, it's carrier-based as you expect.

I don't know much about the state of jailbreaking. It will depend almost entirely on what version of iOS is on that phone.

Note: that phone is about to go end-of-life, sometime in 2023 Apple will completely stop supporting it, I believe. It's capped at iOS 12 for sure though, which is pretty old.

Thank you for the advice. Will give AT&T another shot.

 

[Omar's Wacky Neighbor]

I'd guess that AT&T would be real quick to find the phone in their system if you told them that you wanted to sign up for service.