Carrier T-Mobile SIM Card in a Verizon iPhone 6S Plus?

[ThunderApple]

My mom is getting a iPhone 6S Plus from Verizon due to her contract ending and her having the free discounted upgrade. I'm currently on a iPhone 6 Plus and she asked if I wanted to swap phones with her since she isn't going to be using it that much. I'm on a T-Mobile.

Will I be able to simply pop my T-Mobile sim card into the Verizon 6S Plus and have it working? I heard all iPhone's being sent by Verizon were unlocked out of the gate.

 

[Stevessvt]

My mom is getting a iPhone 6S Plus from Verizon due to her contract ending and her having the free discounted upgrade. I'm currently on a iPhone 6 Plus and she asked if I wanted to swap phones with her since she isn't going to be using it that much. I'm on a T-Mobile.

Will I be able to simply pop my T-Mobile sim card into the Verizon 6S Plus and have it working? I heard all iPhone's being sent by Verizon were unlocked out of the gate.

Yep. I bought a Verizon 6s plus from Best Buy and popped my T-Mobile sim in it and it works perfectly.

 

[rigormortis]

it will work. however you might have to power down the phone and power it on without a sim a couple times to get all the features enabled like wifi calling, voLTE, tethering, visual voice mall. thats what happened to me when i was switching from verizon to t- mobile and back last year

that was with iOS 7 and iOS 8 , so maybe since then its gotten better


when in doubt
turn off phone
remove sim
wait a minute
turn on phone
wait for it to turn on
wait for it to fully boot up and be at the home screen and say no sim
insert sim
let it do its searching..

this lets the iPhone update the performed roaming list on the sim card , and checks all the things the sim card is provisioned for. it was my experience back in September 2014 that this mechanism brings back features that i was missing. like VOLTE when switching sim cards

also with t-mo it enabled tethering on my walmart plan, without me having to pay extra for it

 

[eyoungren]

As stated, what you want to do will work. I'll just explain the "WHY" it works.

Verizon LTE capable iPhones are unlocked per agreement with the FCC.

Your problem may be that your mother cannot use your T-Mobile phone on Verizon. If your T-Mobile iPhone is not unlocked she won't be able to use it.

Secondly, and this is less of a problem because she already has an active Verizon SIM, Verizon will not activate any iPhone that was not originally intended for their network - unlocked or not. So, you have to use an already activated Verizon SIM to get service for non-Verizon phones.

 

[rigormortis]

As stated, what you want to do will work. I'll just explain the "WHY" it works.


Secondly, and this is less of a problem because she already has an active Verizon SIM, Verizon will not activate any iPhone that was not originally intended for their network - unlocked or not. So, you have to use an already activated Verizon SIM to get service for non-Verizon phones.

in the last week of august 2015 verizon came out and said we do not care anymore about non-verizon phones. we want to make it easier to bring unlocked phones to verizon. they are activating every single iPhone 6, 6 plus, and google nexus 6. you can check your IMEI/MEID on their BYOD page and it will say it is compatible.

i wrote several of those trade in companies asking them why is there a price difference between unlocked phones, AT&T phones and unlocked t-mobile phones , now that verizon has officially said all the iPhone 6 and 6 plus series phones are equal now. but they are all greedy people who want to find some way of knocking your quote down as much as $125 because you bought they feel there is some difference between individual models


however the bad news is this is not the case with the 6s or 6s+. they don't seem to be recognizing the a1688 or a1687 unlocked models as being compatible with their network. they say we will try our best to activate it if you bring us one, but over the website they claim it won't work. this is the same deal with sprint, my iPhone 6s+ full price t-mobile phone came back as not a sprint device

i decided to keep it. i wanted to switch it out. because i felt the AT&T version might be white listed. but thats not what apple says on their lte page. so i honestly don't know what the heck is going on here

my best guess / theory is sprint and verizon do not activate phones that do not belong to them during the first 90 days
or like you said originally intended for their network

 

[ThunderApple]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I also just want to ask, would I be able to activate the phone initially with my T-Mobile SIM or will I have to activate it with my moms sim card before popping in my T-Mobile's?

 

[rigormortis]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I also just want to ask, would I be able to activate the phone initially with my T-Mobile SIM or will I have to activate it with my moms sim card before popping in my T-Mobile's?

no, you just take whatever sim you want and stick it in there and activate it.