Unlocking the 3Skypephone (AMOI WP-S1, WP-S2 and others)

I have a mobile from 3. It has Skype on it. It is the second worst mobile phone I have ever owned. The worst was the Danger Hiptop, a phone with a software bug preventing it from ringing. (You can’t make this stuff up.) The third worst phone I ever used was a Motorola. And while we are on the subject of crappy phones, ZTE makes cheap phones for Africans with prehistoric UI — but they are learning fast and will come eat Nokia’s lunch some day, mark my words. But that all wasn’t supposed to be the content of this post…

Here’s the content:

If you want to unlock an Amoi WP-S1 (and many other Amoi phones) you need to download a program call DC Unlocker. You need to install the right drivers so that you can talk to your phone with the USB cable. The lightest weight way to do this is put in the CD-ROM that came with the phone, then cancel out of the autorun crap from 3. Plug in the phone, and use Windows Plug and Pray’s UI in advanced mode to load the drivers in the USD drivers directory of the CD-ROM. You have to do the whole thing 4 times, because the phone presents itself on the USB bus in four different ways. Each time you have to agree that you are installing an unsigned driver (because Amoi was too cheap to get them signed). By using Windows to install the drivers, you get only the drivers and not the other 200 megs of crap on the CD.

Next, you start up DC Unlocker. Tell it you have an Amoi phone, and let it auto-detect it. When it sees your phone, you are ready to pay (at this point you can be confident you’ll be able to unlock it). You click “About” and “Buy credit”, then buy 10 credits for your WP-S1. You have to go find the right number of credits for other phones. (Too bad DC Unlocker doesn’t do this itself.) Ignore all the hooha about dongles and value packs, etc. That’s for the professional unlockers. Just buy 10 credits. They take paypal. Quick, easy, and safe.

Back in DC Unlocker, click on “Server” and use the new username and password you just made. You’ll see your 10 credits. Click on “Unlock”, then “Unlock phone”. Wait a bit, and you’re done.

This is painless and cheaper than the guys in the shops (who are likely doing the same thing anyway, but charging a markup on it). The software is of a surprisingly high quality. I’m very impressed, and I’d be happy to use DC Unlocker again.