How to read your SPC/MSL code for carrier locked phone

This is often the first step we need to do when we have a smartphone locked to specific carrier (Telecommunications Service Provider), especially in CDMA phones, it is often that carrier will lock the phone to their specific programming code. This is normally because the carrier subsidy the phone and sell it at very cheap price (sometime "free" phone) with 12-24 months contract.

The Service Programming Code (SPC) or Master Subsidy Lock (MSL) are usually consist of a 6 digit code (GSM) or 16 digit code (Blackberry).

There's few way to know what is the SPC/MSL code:

1. Ask the Service Provider (Carrier)
• Some customer usually will ask this by the reason of travelling to a country where the current provider do not have Roaming agreement with.
• The Carrier usually will ask for IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity), which can be located at back of the phone, visible after remove the battery or we may press *#06# from phone keypad. 
2. Spend USD10 and get 3rd party to unlock your phone (ebay.com, etc..)
3. To find the code by yourself.

In this 3rd option, we will use one of most famous method use in xda-developer, by using RadioComn. The original thread can be found at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1365058

1. Download the specific USB Driver according to the Windows PC you are using.
2. Download RadioComm  ( I am using RadioComm_11.12.2)
3. Start the phone is cold boot (for my Photon 4G, I have to off the phone then press "vol.down+power" few seconds to force  into fastboot, press "vol.down" few time until I reach "BP Tools" then press "power up" to select this mode).
4. Connect your Phone with USB cable.
5. Start the RadioComm, in start page I will select MSM6800 (since I am using Motorola Photon 4G for experiment) RadioComm will bring you to main page, you may verify that your selection was right "Main >> MA >> CDMA1X >> Wimax (MSM6800)".
6. Make sure the USB connection is "PST USB USB:MB855" or something like that.
7. Select tab "P2K1"
8. At left side navigate to STELEM/RDELEM section and input the following into each parameter:
• Eloement ID : 2786
• Record # : 0001
• Offset : 0000
• Length : 000E
9. Observer that indicator at top right shall turn into "Green" colour then Press "RDELEM" button.
10. You shall see at "Data (Hex Only" the result will be the SPC/MSL code encoded in Hex format, you may need to convert it to Decimal format (Dec) at this website :  
• http://www.string-functions.com/hex-string.aspx
• http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/  
• copy and paste the code at {Hex] section and click "decode" and see the result at [Text] area. 
• Just note the 6 or 8 or 16 digit of human readable character (my Photon 4G gave me 6 digit of number of human readable character).

Good luck.

Rooting Motorola Photon 4G (Sprint locked)

Motorola Photon 4G: How to Root Your Phone
(all the credit goes to xda developers and  Eric Finkenbiner)

The Android development community has been hard at work creating various ways for users to gain root access on their Motorola Photon 4G. If you need a pain free way to root your Photon 4G, follow these steps and you’ll have root access in no time.

First turn on USB Debugging.

1. Go to Settings >> Applications >> Development and  tick "Usb Debugging".
2. Now download the files needed to root the phone. XDA-Developer user edgan created a tar file with all the necessary files. Download photon-torpedo.tar to your computer then copy it to the sdcard on your phone — in this example, I used the download folder on my sdcard. (/sdcard/download/...)  USB connection must be in "USB Mass Storage" 
3. Once the file is copied, go to USB Connection in your notifications area and change it to "Charge Only". 
4. Unplug the USB cable.. 
5. On the Photon 4G, go to Market (Google Play) and install Android Terminal Emulator , and also install "Superuser" 
6. Open the Android Terminal Emulator and copy the photon-torpedo.tar to /data/tmp. 
• $ cp /sdcard/photon-topedo.tar /data/tmp 
• $ cd /data/tmp 
• $ chmod 777 photon-torpedo.tar 
• $ /bin/tar xf photon-torpedo.tar 
• $ ./photon-torpedo.sh  (it will produce some error, but just ignore that..) (you'll notice "root@localhost" listed at last line of the terminal..)
• root@localhost# ./install-su.sh 
• exit 
• exit 
7. Restart the Photon 
8. Verify the Root Installation by two method 
9. Go to terminal and type 
• $ su               or... 
• Install "root checker" from Market..

Enjoy your rooted Motorola Photon 4G.