I am now eligible to unlock my 5S through AT&T. If I do go through the hassle of unlocking my phone, will I continue to receive carrier upgrades as AT&T makes them available? I plan on keeping the phone active on the AT&T network on a monthly basis.
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Yes, you will continue to receive carrier updates etc. It is not a hassle to unlock the phone. Just go to the website and you should receive a response quickly. https://www.att.com/deviceunlock You do not need to restore like their email will state, just insert a T-Mobile or other GSM SIM and it will work.
Nothing will change except your unlock status if you never pull your AT&T SIM card out. But even if you eventually do and go to a different carrier then you will get that carrier's upgrades. If you go back you'd get AT&T carrier upgrades again.
I did get the response, but it's telling me I have to backup, erase, restore. I'm staying with AT&T. Is there a way for me to unlock without doing the whole erase restore thing?
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That's cool. As I mentioned in the post above, do you know if I have to go through the whole erase and restore deal to complete the unlocking process?
Nope. It's an old holdover from the 4s and earlier that no longer applies.
Just insert a different SIM, enter your Apple ID and go.
Be warned though that when you do that and put your old SIM back in you will lose all your saved voicemail (if you have any saved) so do so at your own risk.
They just need to unlock it from their side and that's it, you don't have to restore or anything like that (those are old instructions basically and aren't really needed anymore--the main thing is that they update it on their side that the phone is unlocked).
Do you know if there is any confirmation of their unlocking it? In other words, how do I know if it's unlocked without putting in another SIM?
I called them, and she said the phone could be unlocked, but had no idea what a carrier update was, so I am not going to get anywhere with phone calls to AT&T...
Well, as far as I know, mainly, you either you put another SIM in to see if it works, or you actually go through that restore process essentially simply to see a message about the phone being unlocked. I believe there are some sites/services (mainly paid?) that can check on details of the phone and provide you with lock/unlock information, but I'm not quite certain of how good those are.
After you get the confirmation email. The only way to verify it is unlocked is to use another SIM, or go through the restore process where you should see the "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked" message.
Where does the message appear? In iTunes, or on the phone itself? Thanks for all of your help
Yes, what he said.
You actually don't need to do anything.
Your iPhone is unlocked. You don't need to restore or use another sim unless you just want to verify the unlock.
The process is done on the carriers end and your imei is just entered in the unlocked database.
There's a way of seeing the iTunes message without restoring. You can reactivate the phone by resetting all content and settings. During the activation process, the phone will ask you to plugin to iTunes, just plug in the cable and you will get that congratulations unlocked message..
Where does the message appear? In iTunes, or on the phone itself? Thanks for all of your help