My Saga for Unlocking and Debranding the SonyEricsson J105a (Naite) From FIDO (Rogers)

It’s been two months since I’ve owned my SonyEricsson J105a (Naite) bought from Fido off for $150 dollars. Well, everyone here knows that I’m a tech savvy person and I am willing to hack anything just for the heck of it.

This is my story on debranding, customizing and unlocking my Naite just for the heck of it.

The story all began as soon as I got my hands on a SonyEricsson Naite from a random Fido dealership in Richmond Center. And here’s what I can say about the sales experience there – it seems like the sales associate was trying to pressure me into buying the more expensive SonyEricsson T715a which I see no point in buying. How was the sales associate pressuring me? I just had to laugh in the back of my head when he claimed the Naite isn’t a quad band GSM phone. But then again, I insisted on purchasing the J105a because I like prefer bar phones over any other types of cell phones. Sales experience wise, I’m noticing these sales associates in Fido stores tend to lie to get you into purchasing the more expensive phones that are just considered overkill for me. My needs for a phone is to talk, light internet browsing and tethering. Ranting aside, I’m going to go on the unlocking part.

Anyone who’s owned a GSM phone in Canada would know it’s most likely locked to the provider where it was purchased from. Naturally, I wanted to find out who can unlock my Naite for less than $20 bucks. None of the ‘unlockers’ I talked to was willing to do it for less than $20. However, I found out that a group out there calling themselves “Cruiser Team” are charging around $15 USD to unlock any Sony Ericsson phone. For me, I found a reseller who sold me credits for about $13 CAD, $7 cheaper than most unlockers out there and I get to have the codes that can re-lock the phone back to Fido if necessary. Now this phone can be used on Rogers, Bell and Telus… possibly on WIND Mobile or Moblicity if they do get the license to operate on the North American GSM 850/1900 band.

On the topic of debranding, you may have seen me post on HowardForums about the Customize.xml file for the Naite. Well, that’s the file you’ll need to debrand and customize your phone’s settings. You can do it using either a customize_upgrade.xml for settings to be applied on a non-permanent basis (useful for testing, etc) or by overwriting the customize.xml file for settings applied permanently. Where’s the customize.xml file? It’s here. Customize the file to your liking, it’s your choice.

On how of using the customize or customize_upgrade file, you have to upload it to your phone using a2uploader, which can be found here. That page is in Russian, but looking for the a2uploader.rar file isn’t that hard. Just scroll down.

After customizing the file to your liking, use a2uploader to upload the customize.xml or customize_upgrade.xml file, shut down your phone completely and remove the battery. Start a2uploader in file manager mode. a2uploader at this point will instruct you to press down the “C” button on the phone while connecting the USB cable. Now navigate to /tpa/preset/custom and drop that customize.xml or customize_upgrade.xml file there. Shut the phone down and start it up. It should see either the customize.xml or customize_upgrade.xml file and apply your customizations that you’ve made to it by displaying a “Please Wait” screen. After that “Please Wait” screen’s disappeared, verify that the settings applied correctly.

On a side note, if you do use the customize_upgrade.xml file, read my HowardForums post about the CDA value. You need to put that CDA value in the customize_upgrade.xml file as my Naite lost it when I a customize_upgrade.xml file without the CDA value on it.

Hope my story of debranding and unlocking my Naite will help somebody out there that’s desperate to rid of Fido’s logos, demo games and themes.

4 Replies to “My Saga for Unlocking and Debranding the SonyEricsson J105a (Naite) From FIDO (Rogers)”

  1. At first I used D-Ultimate Unlocker, but now there’s a free service out there called Omnius server. Unlocks most phones up to CID 53. A quick Google will point where it is 😉

  2. Minor problem: Some people just don’t want to void their warranties. This method as someone on howardforums explained, shouldn’t void the warranty on it.

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