UnlockMe!

UnlockMe! recovered the unlock code already configured in a Series 60 handset. The program was installed and run on the phone itself; after a few minutes it reported back the code that the phone was currently set to expect.

Archive notice. Symbian Toys was an independent hobbyist software project for the Symbian Series 60 platform, which Nokia discontinued in 2013. These pages preserve the project's own documentation as it was published. The software is no longer distributed here, and no support was ever offered for it. Device and platform names appear for identification only; the project was never affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any device manufacturer.

What it was for

The page named two situations and no others:

• A second-hand handset had been bought and its unlock code was not known.
• The owner had forgotten the code because the option had not been used for a long time.

What it was not for

The original page carried an unambiguous limitation, and it is preserved here in full because it is the whole ethical shape of the program:

If you "find" a mobile phone that during startup asks you to insert the "Unlock Code" you will never be able to get the code using this program.

The reason is structural rather than a deliberate restriction. UnlockMe! had to be installed and executed on the handset, and a phone already sitting at a code prompt at startup will not run anything. A locked device stayed locked. The tool could help the person who had the phone open in front of them and had lost a code; it could do nothing at all for someone holding a handset that was not theirs.

That distinction matters for how this software should be read today. Same period, same site: Guardian approached the problem from the opposite direction, hardening a handset against use by anyone but its owner.

Compatibility

The archived compatibility list covered the Nokia 3230, 6260, 7610, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6682, N70 and N90; the Panasonic X700 and X800; the Samsung SGH-D720 and SGH-D730; and the Lenovo P930 — the same Series 60 2nd Edition generation that Guardian's early builds targeted.

Ports that never shipped

Ports to UIQ and Series 80 handsets were discussed and were made conditional on project funding reaching a minimum. They never appeared. The same was true of the FlashSMS ports, and the UnlockMe! FAQ records the position as it stood.

Release record

A single distribution file is evidenced in the archived download records, listed on the release archive page. Source was published in 2021 as the UnlockMe! source repository.

What the code in question was

The unlock code here is the handset's own security code — the one the phone asks for when a protection setting is enabled, distinct from the SIM card's PIN and distinct again from a network or carrier lock. Handsets of this generation shipped with a well-known factory default, which most owners never changed and a minority changed once and then forgot about entirely, sometimes years earlier. Both failure modes produced the same result: a working phone with a setting nobody could turn off.

Because the code was stored on the device and the program ran on the device, recovering it was a matter of reading configuration rather than of breaking anything — which is why the program could be published openly, discussed on forums and eventually released as source without difficulty.

Why it took a few minutes

The page said the result arrived "after some minutes", which is an unusual thing to advertise. On the hardware of the period that delay was simply the cost of the work: these were single-core devices running at a few hundred megahertz with a handful of megabytes of usable RAM, and anything that had to walk a meaningful amount of stored state took real time. The honest phrasing — several minutes, not instant — is characteristic of the whole catalogue's documentation, which consistently told users what to expect rather than what would sound best.

Support

As with every program published here, UnlockMe! came with no technical support and the site said so on the page. The UnlockMe! FAQ collects the questions that were asked most often, which in practice was almost entirely about platform coverage rather than about the program's behaviour.