I bought hard bricked Samsung Galaxy Mini and in my previous post Flashing GT-S5570 is explained how this phone was unbricked. In short, boot loader was fixed with RiffBox and from Froyo 2.2.1 upgraded to Gingerbread 2.3.6 and finally to Cyanogenmod 7.2. Phone worked perfectly except displayed “No SIM card” message. That didn’t bother me because SIM card was not inserted yet. But after SIM card was inserted phone still complained about “No SIM card”. Well, this S5570 was not only hard bricked it was SIM locked also. ;)
Here are original error messages related to SIM card problem although SIM card was inserted:
No SIM card Emergency calls only ... Please insert a SIM card
After searching for a while, I found two SIM unlock methods for S5570 phone: stl5 and bml5. First method is very risky because it reads stl5 device and write back content to the stl5. Eventually I found list of partitions / devices for this phone on XDA:
bml0: contents of the entire flash bml1: mibib bml2: qcsbl bml3: oemsbl bml4: amss bml5: block level representation of /dev/stl5 (efs) bml6: block level representation of /dev/stl6 (empty) bml7: arm11boot bml8: boot image bml9: recovery image bml10: unknown bml11: empty (contains only 0xff bytes) bml12: block level representation of /dev/stl12 (/system) bml13: block level representation of /dev/stl13 (/data) bml14: block level representation of /dev/stl14 (/cache)
stl5 method is not recommended because of writing to the efs partition and that can result with lost IMEI (phone is not able to connect to the mobile network without correct IMEI code). I’m not sure if IMEI can be recovered without sending phone to the service. Fortunately, bml5 method is much safer because it only reads partition content. After dumping bml5 to the SD card, content is opened with hex editor (viewer) and searched for unlock code. In my case found number was 70626470. I will not go through all details of bml5 SIM unlock method for S5570. Instead here is original XDA thread:
[TUTORIAL] Unlock Samsung [GT-S5570 / i5500 / Galaxy Ace]
In case of stock ROM, phone should be temporary rooted to have access to read bml5 partition. Custom ROMs are able to read all partitions but unlock popup will not appear when foreign SIM card is inserted. So, in my case I read bml5 from Cyanogenmod with term application. Open Terminal Emulator application and grant Super-user access. With following commands, bml5 will be dumped to the SD card:
$ su # cat /dev/block/bml5 > /sdcard/bml5.img # exit $ exit
After bml5 partition is dumped to the file, next step is to copy bml5.img file to the PC, open with hex editor like Hex Editor XVI32 for Windows and search for the following HEX string:
FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Unlock number will be easily visible (rounded with some odd characters). Here is XVI32 screen shot of my bml5.img file:
But my phone was on Cyanogenmod and that means to return to the stock ROM, insert SIM card, input unlock number and return to the Cyanogenmod. It can be done with nandroid backup to shorten the procedure. If you want to see whether your phone is locked or not, the following code will show popup with locking info:
*#7465625# - Dial code to check if phone it's network locked.
I tried to input *#7465625# code on Cyanogenmod and the phone respond with “Stared USSD code” message. But after phone is returned to the stock ROM, the blue popup appeared with complete lock information. This time everything was fine and phone could call and receive calls …
[IMEI number] – Please email me unlock code for my Australian Optus Samsung mini GT-S5570
@Jason – Unfortunately, I can’t send you unlock code for GT-S5570 phone based on your IMEI number. If you have some basic computer skills, you can find your own unlock code with method described in this post. The trick is in exporting bml5 phone partition to the file (dump is about 9MB) and search for code with HEX editor. Till now, I have found unlock code for two S5570 and one I5500 Samsung phones without any problem – quick and easy.
hello im new to this site but i want to know how to get bml5.img i don’t know that thing but I need to unlock my samsung galaxy mini ……………….please help to allow me to unlock my phone
@brixpaul – To unlock Samsung Galaxy Mini you will have to temporary root your phone (for example with SuperOneClick tool) and then make dump of /dev/block/bml5 device to sdcard. After img file (dump) is created on sdcard, you can easily copy this file to the PC (via USB cable). Once you have bml5.img file on PC, it can be opened with Hex Editor XVI32. Please read careful instructions because one wrong step can lead to unintended consequences.
This post describes my case where phone was already installed with CyanogenMod. Reading bml5 device was possible without temporary rooting because custom ROM has root access (but I should return to stock ROM to enter found unlock key).
Hi, I did all the procedure and open the bml5.img with the hex editor but there is no code like yours close to the string you gave. I also tried with some apps to unlocked it, they found a code but it didn’t worked either. I have Galaxy Ace.
@Felix – Described procedure is for GT-S5570 (Samsung Galaxy Mini) smartphone and it will not work for Galaxy Ace. Hope you can find a good unlock documentation somewhere else.
thanks so much
@myomin – I’m glad this post was helpful. Cheers!
It seems to be a simple way to find the code by extracting bml5.img – but always I did this like described (Samsung Galaxy mini S5570 like yours) I got a bml5.img file on my SD-Card ——-> but it is empty.
Unfortunately you can´t get any Information out of this file. WHY is it empty?
Best regards and – hopefully – thanks for your help.
Thomas
@Thomas – I’m not sure why bml5.img file is empty. In my two cases the file was OK and it was very easy to find the code. Do you have enough room on your SD card? That’s the only reason I can think of.
… hope someone else will have the answer and post it for others.
My first attempts ended up with empty files too until I realised that it was bml5.img as opposed to bml15.img. (Bravo, Mike, Lima, Five not Bravo, Mike, One, Five.) Dohhhh!!!! It took a while to find the code as it wasn’t too easy to spot but the method certainly worked for my phone.
Hi!
A have got BML5.img from my GT-S5570i, but i did not found te code. The BML5.img file size is 13107200 byte. No “FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30” pattern found in the img file. A trided to download bml5_analyzer.jar, but this file is deleted from the net. Can you help me? I can send bml5.imf file for you.
Thanx
@Graywallis – I’m glad this post is useful and your phone is unlocked now. Cheers!
@Awe – S5570i model is not the same as S5570 and this unlock method will not work for your phone. Please try to find an answer or post a question on XDA Developers forum. This forum is excellent source of quality information.
Hi. I have tried this method several times but, no code is found. Creating bml5.img is ok but, finding the code has been frustrating to me. If i send you my IMEI number, is it possible you could give me a hand?
HI, just want to tell you that my bml5 file received to my computer also turned out to be empty like it was for Thomas from Austria. My question is why. Could the reason possibly be that 1) it actually is empty from the begnning (I do see in the file folder in the phone that it has been copied to the sdcard though) or could it be that 2) it creates a´dummy file’ which is empty if the path (in the Cat command ) is incrrect. I have two sim cards. I have the new one which doesn’t work since the phone is locked and I have the old one where I guess the unlock code (bml5 file(exists).