Most carriers that launched the Dell Streak 5 locked the tablet phone so that you cannot use any SIM card other than the carrier’s own. But just because the carrier (for example o2, AT&T, or any other) put the restriction on it, doesn’t mean you can’t get your Streak unlocked. As the owner of the phone, you are free to do with it whatever you want and your first step may be to contact the network and ask whether they send you your Dell Streak unlock code for free. If you are in the US, carriers must give out the code to their customer by law (refer to the DMCA act when you speak to them); however, it is up to the carrier when they give the code to you. Typically, they make you wait until they earned enough from you. And if you are not a current customer, they will probably not give the code to you at all.
At UnlockStreak.com, the unlocker company promises to unlock any Dell Streak in under 5 minutes after the software is installed to your computer. The Dell Streak Unlocker reads the original unlock code from the phone and displays it on the computer screen. Yes, the unlock code is actually stored on your phone already (by Dell)! The trick is to make it visible. Once the code is visible to you, you can use it to unlock your phone. We asked them to provide us with a free license to test their claim. Here are the results:
We used a Dell Streak locked to AT&T and our goal was to make it work with a T-Mobile SIM card. Before unlocking the Streak, the software lets you run a free compatibility test on your Streak. This test confirms whether your Streak is really unlockable. If the test turns out positive, it is guaranteed that the unlocking will work with your device. Here is a screen shot of the compatibility interface.
After the software confirmed that our Streak can be unlocked, we entered the registration code and did the actual unlock. It took about 2 minutes and the code was shown on the screen:
With our T-Mobile SIM inserted, the phone rebooted and displayed the Network Locked screen. We dialed in the digits, rebooted the Streak one more time and confirmed that it really did unlock by making a call with our T-Mobile SIM card.
Ok so what to do with an unlocked Dell Streak? First of all, we don’t want AT&T anymore and actually neither T-Mobile as far as traveling overseas concerns. When in a foreign country, we’ll simply buy a cheap prepaid SIM and save money on roaming! Or maybe I’ll just give it away as a gift to my sister who lives in London. Because it’s unlocked, she can use it with a UK SIM card of her choice.
In summary, we’d say the $29 for the unlocking is well worth the investment. Before you shell out your hard earned cash, make sure that your Dell Streak is unlockable by running the free unlock test.
