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I bought an evo from someone from Craigslist and it wouldnt activate. Sprint told me the ESN was not correct.
So i did a ton of research and i know i cant even ask certain things so i am trying my best to word this correctly because i am not 100% sure how i can even ask for help with this.
After doing a lot of reading i figured out by using CDMA WS 2.7 that the ESN and MEID dont match whats on the sticker under the battery...which finally made sense to me why Sprint wouldnt let me activate it.
I dont know where to go from here, i am stuck and ready to just dump it back on Craigslist to sell to someone who could either fix it themselves or is willing to deal w/it for whatever service its setup for.
So before i give up i was hoping to reach out to this community for help. If you cant post it because it would infringe the forum rules then please just PM me. Any idea's would be helpful or just some good advice besides throwing this thing at a brick wall. Thanks folks.
I'm pretty sure you got scammed into buying a borked phone. Would probably sell it back on craigslist, honestly obviously
I've seen Evos with bad ESN's sell for a pretty penny on eBay. They can still be used outside the US and can be flashed over to MetroPCS or Boost Mobile here, so it is still not completely useless.
From what I know, the only way to get it to work on Sprint is to know someone in Sprint who will be kind enough to add the ESN on your phone to their database so it can be activated. A co-worker of mine had a Verizon Blackberry Storm on Sprint by doing this a few years back, but he had a family member that worked for Sprint help him out. For all I know, this can't be done anymore, either.
so you dont think i can repair it back to the stock one thats on the sticker under the battery ?
i have been doing a lot of reading and i figured i would give it a shot since if its bad i have nothing to lose.
So far i have the ESN zero'd out 0000000
Meid i cant get because i only found 9 locations, i am not sure where the 10th one is hidden. I am only guessing from what i read that its in 10 locations and thats why it hasnt worked yet.
Using CDMA 2.7 do you know how i might be able to scan to find the last MEID location ?
First off, did Sprint say the Meid that is labeled under the battery is bad? I can only think of two reasons why someone would change the esn/meid. The phone's meid is bad or the person wanted to run an EVO on the $30/month Sero plan. I'm the latter.
Before you go any farther, go back to the Sprint store and find out if the meid under the battery is usable on Sprint. If so you can change the meid back to stock but it is going to require some reading and some effort on your part. CDMAWS 2.7 will not work on the EVO, 2.7 can not do meid #s. Since the esn is all zero's I'm betting the guy botched the job and tried writing the new meid/esn but did not find all the addresses. When you try to change the meid you have to zero out all the meids and all the esn (don't be confused if you see the term pesn. A meid phone calculates an esn based on the meid # and this called a pesn. Essentially pesn and esn are the same thing), there are approx. 16 memory locations you have zero out. If the phone has froyo on it, there are 1 or 2 address that are really hard to get to show up when you are doing a memory dump. You will have to run several dumps until you are no longer finding new memory locations. Rolling back to 2.1 would make it easier.
Go to mobile-files.us. There is a lengthy thread on changing the meid/esn on the EVO. Hopefully the person didn't wipe out your 4G certificate too, I think I read here on XDA that there is away to restore your certificate but I never had to so I never followed the thread.
You aren't completely screwed, think of it like you bought a fixer upper. Even if your stock meid is bad, you could always barrow one from your previous phone but you will not have 4G.
Good Luck, I hope you don't get discouraged and try to find another sucker. It just plain s*cks getting duped. I've been down that road before and that's what got me interested in this aspect of hacking.
double post
If you see the esn and meid from CDMA write it down and call and activate with those numbers, should work.
gedster314 said:
First off, did Sprint say the Meid that is labeled under the battery is bad? I can only think of two reasons why someone would change the esn/meid. The phone's meid is bad or the person wanted to run an EVO on the $30/month Sero plan. I'm the latter.
Before you go any farther, go back to the Sprint store and find out if the meid under the battery is usable on Sprint. If so you can change the meid back to stock but it is going to require some reading and some effort on your part. CDMAWS 2.7 will not work on the EVO, 2.7 can not do meid #s. Since the esn is all zero's I'm betting the guy botched the job and tried writing the new meid/esn but did not find all the addresses. When you try to change the meid you have to zero out all the meids and all the esn (don't be confused if you see the term pesn. A meid phone calculates an esn based on the meid # and this called a pesn. Essentially pesn and esn are the same thing), there are approx. 16 memory locations you have zero out. If the phone has froyo on it, there are 1 or 2 address that are really hard to get to show up when you are doing a memory dump. You will have to run several dumps until you are no longer finding new memory locations. Rolling back to 2.1 would make it easier.
Go to mobile-files.us. There is a lengthy thread on changing the meid/esn on the EVO. Hopefully the person didn't wipe out your 4G certificate too, I think I read here on XDA that there is away to restore your certificate but I never had to so I never followed the thread.
You aren't completely screwed, think of it like you bought a fixer upper. Even if your stock meid is bad, you could always barrow one from your previous phone but you will not have 4G.
Good Luck, I hope you don't get discouraged and try to find another sucker. It just plain s*cks getting duped. I've been down that road before and that's what got me interested in this aspect of hacking.
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Thanks, i think he had it programmed for something else like maybe cricket or something, i see a lot of them listed for that, he told me the ESN was good and i checked on a site that checks them and the one under the battery is good.
SO i would have activated it over the phone already but they wouldnt because they said it wasnt a sprint phone... i didnt want to make it their problem and i didnt know what i was talking about at the time as far as asking them for help to fix it.
I also dont want to just dump it back on someone else. I would like to finish the job and get this phone working correctly. I always feel better when i learn how and why its done.
right now im basically stuck after finding 9 of the MEID locations to zero-out. If i cant use CDMA WS 2.7 do you know what program i could use before spending a bunch of money on software ? If buying a new phone will end up as much as software it wouldnt be worth it for me ya know ?
The Evo has OS Version 2.2 and Radio 1.36. Do i need to change either of those before going any further ?
I used a combination of Motorola QPST/QXDM and CDMAWS 3.5 (I bought this when I was playing with the Pre. Can't be shared with others because it checks their servers to verify if that PC has been registered with that user lic.). I used CDMAWS to search for meids and esns. Used Motorola QXBM to change the scm, zero out meids/esns and then write. I also used QPST to match the programming info with my donor phone. The thread at mobile-files mentions how other people dumped the memory locations without having a paid version of CDMAWS.
Even if you went out and bought CDMAWS, my experience is that CDMAWS can not change the EVO's meid on it's own. Maybe some CDMAWS experts can do it but I could not. So don't spend your money on that thinking it will be your savior. It's a great tool for doing programming and working on older phones but it seems to struggle with the newer stuff.
Future Lesson:
When buying a Sprint phone on CL meet up at a Sprint sure and make sure they can activate it in the store. Once successful you then pay the dude.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Hey! I purchased an htc evo from a friend of mine who fail to pay his phone bill, so the phone have a bad esn. Can someone guide me thru flashing it to boost mobile please. I look all over and couldnt' find nothing on flashing htc evo too boost. I found something on epic to boost that's about it. I heard writing the meid is different can someone please help me out. thanks. I purchase a boost incognito as a donor phone.
sakpase said:
Hey! I purchased an htc evo from a friend of mine who fail to pay his phone bill, so the phone have a bad esn. Can someone guide me thru flashing it to boost mobile please. I look all over and couldnt' find nothing on flashing htc evo too boost. I found something on epic to boost that's about it. I heard writing the meid is different can someone please help me out. thanks. I purchase a boost incognito as a donor phone.
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i have seen guides but from what i read it a royal pain the ass and don't work 99% of the time
I bet its a stolen phone
HERE'S a tutorial on flashing to metro. It will be a good start but you will need to change the addy from metro to boost. A little google searching should help you out but like I said, start here.
I know two people, that got there evo stolen too bad they can sorta still activate it on ghetto metro.
Any talk of boost/metro flashing should be banned >=]
The information in my post here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1008909 may be helpful.
I completely agree with both nsxla and weehooherod... stolen phones shouldn't be able to be able to be activated. At the same time the way providers tie you into using their devices is as ridiculous as Apple's software copyrights not allowing you to use software you purchase on non-approved hardware (that's another topic). I have an acquaintances that is a area sales manager for a big cell company and his only argument for carriers not accepting outside phones is that they are not optimized for the individual provider's network and hence can bog it down. Yeah... mmmm hhhmm
Flashing to Metro is perfectly fine, because you don't need to illegally modify your phone, hell metro openly flashes evo's to their service.
However, putting an evo on Boost is outside of the legal guidelines since it requires a donor phone to clone onto the evo.
As far as MetroPCS and other pre-paid services bashing them is just plain ignorant. In some states you'll get better coverage with Metro than you would AT&T or some other contract providers and the prices are good.
To the OP: Metro has better coverage than Boost in my area so it might be worth checking out where you live.
Hi, i have seen evo work flawlessly on other networks and many guys on ebay and craiglist have been selling them. I have a few questions, i would appreciate if you guys can answer them as honestly as possible, coz i m considering getting one, but at the same time i dont want to land up in trouble. I will happily pay 20 bucks more a month than do something which is legally not accepted.
1. I hv seen phones which have their MEID registered in d databases of the other networks. Now my question is , is there anything wrong or illegal if people get the meid of evo registered onto the network by social engineering ?
2. Can you trust the craiglist/ebay guys, coz even if they get your meid registered, they will know your phone no and your meid, what if they mess with it later ? Can they misues the meid/no and if they do, who will be held responsible ?
3. What happens if later the network figures out by some means that the registered meid is not of their supported phones ? What action can they take ?
4. What challeges will i face if i need to transfer my number to a different handset or if i wish to port my number ? Will they block my number if they find that the meid is of an unsupported phone ?
5. Lastly, if i need to sell my phone, what do i do ? How do i get my number out of the phone and what all things need to be done.(sorry for my limited knowledge, i have very limited experience with cdma)
PS : I m only talking about where the phones meid is registered and not where the phone has been programed/cl*ned etc.
All help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
techspark said:
Hi, i have seen evo work flawlessly on other networks and many guys on ebay and craiglist have been selling them. I have a few questions, i would appreciate if you guys can answer them as honestly as possible, coz i m considering getting one, but at the same time i dont want to land up in trouble. I will happily pay 20 bucks more a month than do something which is legally not accepted.
1. I hv seen phones which have their MEID registered in d databases of the other networks. Now my question is , is there anything wrong or illegal if people get the meid of evo registered onto the network by social engineering ?
2. Can you trust the craiglist/ebay guys, coz even if they get your meid registered, they will know your phone no and your meid, what if they mess with it later ? Can they misues the meid/no and if they do, who will be held responsible ?
3. What happens if later the network figures out by some means that the registered meid is not of their supported phones ? What action can they take ?
4. What challeges will i face if i need to transfer my number to a different handset or if i wish to port my number ? Will they block my number if they find that the meid is of an unsupported phone ?
5. Lastly, if i need to sell my phone, what do i do ? How do i get my number out of the phone and what all things need to be done.(sorry for my limited knowledge, i have very limited experience with cdma)
PS : I m only talking about where the phones meid is registered and not where the phone has been programed/cl*ned etc.
All help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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Simple answer to all questions. This would require MEID cloning which is illegal.
^^ As i mentioned, these are not cloned ones. They have the og meid of d evo registered onto the database by some means. No techie work has been done on the phone, the meid that is printed on the box, d same meid is shown under the settings.
tgruendler said:
Simple answer to all questions. This would require MEID cloning which is illegal.
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It's only illegal if you are cloning a phone that you do not own. It's like downloading an ISO. If you already own the cd you can download it as much as you want.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
This is still pretty shady.
Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of doing this? At least in the United States there are really only 2 big players that support CDMA networks -- Verizon and Sprint. Personally I think Sprint has some of the most reasonable pricing for their unlimited plans. I suppose you could use it on Cricket's network as well but why would you want to do that other than price?
I think the $69.99 price/month (I guess it's actually $79.99 after you tack on the $10 for 4G) is really fair. I previously had a 25% discount through my employer which made the final bill each month $70. I have since dropped my own line and switched to my parents' family plan. Now I only pay $30/month.
It's only illegal if you are cloning a phone that you do not own. It's like downloading an ISO. If you already own the cd you can download it as much as you want.
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True. I would like to know one thing, if i get the phone from ebay/craiglist and later that guy clones a different phone(which he owns) with the meid and no which is on my evo(since he would knw everything abt my phone) and if caught, who will be the one who will land up in trouble ??
Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of doing this?
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Price ! Boost - $50 unlimited. I am happy with gsm, i m just considering it at the moment, but i first need definite answers to all my questions before i take a step forward.
I don't think Boost uses GSM. I believe it's iDEN networks. But the Evo is a CDMA phone so I don't see how you could use it on a GSM or iDEN network. Maybe folks outside the US don't have this problem but certainly in the States I think you're tied to a CDMA network so your only options are Sprint, Verizon, or Cricket.
gamblor01 said:
I don't think Boost uses GSM. I believe it's iDEN networks. But the Evo is a CDMA phone so I don't see how you could use it on a GSM or iDEN network. Maybe folks outside the US don't have this problem but certainly in the States I think you're tied to a CDMA network so your only options are Sprint, Verizon, or Cricket.
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No no, i m sorry i didnt explain it well. Boost uses cdma. What i meant to say was, i m currently happy using gsm, i was considering switching to cdma, only if i get proper answers to questions i listed
That makes more sense. Boost must have migrated because I swear they used iDEN. Still -- I like my family plan option (which I realize may not be an option for you). Yes it has 1500 minutes/month but you only use minutes if you call a land line -- mobile to mobile calls are free. Can't beat $30/month for an Evo.
Whatever you choose, good luck.
They use both now but, I think they are migrating to an all cdma network since sprint is really doing away with the nextel network. They started using cdma in early 2010. But if you can get it on the network it will work. I would personally do it myself *google*.... and stay away from the shady people and make sure it is done right.
My wife and I use our phones more for the smart phone functions, and maybe use 300-500 minutes, 500 texts a month. The ting mobile plans would save us $1000 a year, the problem is that you have to buy phones straight from them.
According to the Ting support, some of their customers have gotten around this problem by purchasing one of their cheap phones, and then cloning the ESN to their better sprint / verizon phone. Ting encourages this, but I need to figure out how to do it.
Any ideas? Thanks!
I tried to post the link to the ting support staff statement, but apparently I haven't posted on XDA enough yet. So to find the forum post, just highlight this (including the quotation marks) and google it:
"Is it possible to activate ex-Verizon or ex-Sprint smartphone on Ting?"
This is possible I'm sorry I don't have a how to but I'm here to give you some encouragement. This has been done on numerous different wireless carriers so if you figure out how it would be as simple as 1,2,3...
I think flashing to alternative carriers doesn't differ so if you look at the how to flash boost mobile or cricket here on xda and ask them ill link them to ya
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1473141
Sent From My Thugnificent SPH-D700 because its more than Magnificent
This is something i would like to know too been trying to find a way to get my GF att phone to work with Verizon but everything ive found says it cant be done because Verizon is CDMA and att is GSM and the 2 technologies arent compatible
Pretty sure you guys are going to get flamed for this discussion or worse.
Isn't messing with esn illegal?
sent from my secret underground bunker
K3VlN said:
This is something i would like to know too been trying to find a way to get my GF att phone to work with Verizon but everything ive found says it cant be done because Verizon is CDMA and att is GSM and the 2 technologies arent compatible
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Yeah your not going to get anything working there two completly different radio frequecies there bud
Sent From My Thugnificent SPH-D700 because its more than Magnificent
mjben said:
Pretty sure you guys are going to get flamed for this discussion or worse.
Isn't messing with esn illegal?
sent from my secret underground bunker
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Yes but this is flashing to an alternative carrier with an esn they have bought and paid for what your referring to is a ghost esn not esn swapping
Sent From My Thugnificent SPH-D700 because its more than Magnificent
yeah thats what i gathered just trying to find out if there was a way to get around that with out taking the phone apart...i told her to just sell it on swappa i already rooted it so she should get a lil chunk of change for it
mjben said:
Pretty sure you guys are going to get flamed for this discussion or worse.
Isn't messing with esn illegal?
sent from my secret underground bunker
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Really man... you haven't seen the threads on how to do this for boost, virgin, and cricket? Those threads have been here since before I was a member... you're just not allowed to go into significant detail about it... as long as nobody explains how to do the esn switch you all should be alright... (btw there are TONS of guides on how to do this.... its basically the same for every carrier with minor changes here and there...) not hard to do and takes less than 20 minutes once you get it down... also if you would rather metro pcs or have one in your area most of their stores have a rep there that will do this for you... just don't pay them until they get data working!!!!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Biggoron said:
Yes but this is flashing to an alternative carrier with an esn they have bought and paid for what your referring to is a ghost esn not esn swapping
Sent From My Thugnificent SPH-D700 because its more than Magnificent
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Ah, OK. Thanks for the clarity. I've seen other folks threads get quite beaten up over that sort of thing.
sent from my secret underground bunker
Should have no problem flashing the phone as long as both phones are cdma phones. Might be difficult getting mobile data and MMS working though. I am running an epic on virgin mobile and everything works except mms. I have gotten mms to send just can't receive it. As for the legality I made sure to zero out the esn on my old phone so both cant be active at same time. Might be a good idea to avoid the risk of being banned.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Thanks everybody!
Entirely Possible
Yes, a Sprint phone on Ting would be easy to do. In your case, the Epic 4G phone by Samsung is incredibly easy to change the ESN on. All Samsung phones are really... especially on Verizon as their SPC codes are 000000. The standard Samsung SPC code unlock password though should work on Sprint Samsung phones. Google around for it.
The problem with all of this though is that you'll have to purchase a Ting phone in the first place. Now maybe you could purchase the feature phone that they have available and use that ESN, but using hundreds of megabytes on an ESN that is supposed to be a feature phone might be suspect in Ting's system. I'm not sure they would care though, but you would stick out like a sore thumb. Buying one of their smart phones seems to defeat the purpose of doing this as you would be left with a unusable smartphone that is probably better than your Epic 4G in the first place. You could take your Epic 4G to Boost. I admit, Ting rocks especially for more than one phone on a plan, but Boost isn't bad.
Don't go to Virgin Mobile. It is the same network as Sprint and Boost, but getting the phone on VM is difficult. You need the A-logins and Passwords that are difficult to get if you don't know what you are doing. Also, VM seems to more actively police their network for this type of use and if you don't have everything exactly copied from the donor phone you'll be noticed. No one really is sure what all needs to be copied over and after about 3 months or so the phone is usually noticed. It is kinda a mystery. I noticed that a person above said he has a phone on VM from another carrier. Might want to inquire with him though he said that he had several phones so maybe the little use of the VM phone is enabling him to skirt under the radar.
For the person looking for AT&T on Verizon... as already mentioned... not possible. I would look into using Red Pocket for AT&T's MVNO. You could also go to Simple Mobile, but would not get 3G data.
Let me know of anyone else has any questions...
AerieAngel said:
Yes, a Sprint phone on Ting would be easy to do. In your case, the Epic 4G phone by Samsung is incredibly easy to change the ESN on. All Samsung phones are really... especially on Verizon as their SPC codes are 000000. The standard Samsung SPC code unlock password though should work on Sprint Samsung phones. Google around for it.
The problem with all of this though is that you'll have to purchase a Ting phone in the first place. Now maybe you could purchase the feature phone that they have available and use that ESN, but using hundreds of megabytes on an ESN that is supposed to be a feature phone might be suspect in Ting's system. I'm not sure they would care though, but you would stick out like a sore thumb. Buying one of their smart phones seems to defeat the purpose of doing this as you would be left with a unusable smartphone that is probably better than your Epic 4G in the first place. You could take your Epic 4G to Boost. I admit, Ting rocks especially for more than one phone on a plan, but Boost isn't bad.
Don't go to Virgin Mobile. It is the same network as Sprint and Boost, but getting the phone on VM is difficult. You need the A-logins and Passwords that are difficult to get if you don't know what you are doing. Also, VM seems to more actively police their network for this type of use and if you don't have everything exactly copied from the donor phone you'll be noticed. No one really is sure what all needs to be copied over and after about 3 months or so the phone is usually noticed. It is kinda a mystery. I noticed that a person above said he has a phone on VM from another carrier. Might want to inquire with him though he said that he had several phones so maybe the little use of the VM phone is enabling him to skirt under the radar.
For the person looking for AT&T on Verizon... as already mentioned... not possible. I would look into using Red Pocket for AT&T's MVNO. You could also go to Simple Mobile, but would not get 3G data.
Let me know of anyone else has any questions...
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Virgin Mobile isn't hard to do.. I wrote up the guide for us, the only ones having issues are the few who don't use the phone written on the guide, and many who do not bother reading the guide. I have heard boost is actually more tedious.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium
Hey guys i remember reading awhile back on a way to flash a phone to a different carrier incase your phone was blacklisted. I bought this phone off ebay several months ago and dont really wanna call sprint incase someone stole it but i will if it will possibly get taken of that list. I havnt been able ro find amy guides or anything on it since though is it still possible i have the 32gb sprint version
Imei cloning is illegal. No help here.
Only thing yo can do is flash to cricket/metropcs or some other carrier that doesn't care. But if blacklisted, both sprint and Verizon are a no go
Typed on the Nexus
MordyT said:
Imei cloning is illegal. No help here.
Only thing yo can do is flash to cricket/metropcs or some other carrier that doesn't care. But if blacklisted, both sprint and Verizon are a no go
Typed on the Nexus
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Ah thats what it was cricket thank you are there any guides around to do this? I know imei is illegal haha xD not looking for that just trying to switch carriers