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Transfer service to new phone by moving the SIM card myself? Is it really that easy?
- Thread starter Zeos
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Yep. Just that easy. (of course you still need to backup/restore all the phone contents, but the service follows the SIM, phone # and all)
Such as... ?
I moved my 5S SIM to my new 6 and haven't noticed anything awry. What features am I missing?
i think i read on here that some people were missing some features. could of been from different carriers though.
rigor's list of moving sim deal post
when you move a sim card from one iPhone to another , your carrier may not know your current IMEI # ( the serial number of the phone ). this may come back to haunt you when it comes time to unlock your device
when moving sims, make sure the carrier knows your IMEI, the guy at the AT&T store might chuckle and not believe you, but trust me. make them put the imei on your account
missing features
when i moved my verizon sim from an iPhone 5 to a tmo iPhone 6, i had to wait for VOLTE and Visual Voice Mail to show up.
i think some features required me to power down my iPhone 6 eject sim, , turn it on, wait for it to say "NO SIM" , insert sim, to restore these features.
volte took a day or so to show up, and visual voice mail took less time to show up
you always want to move the sim card yourself. because if you ask for a new one, they will likely charge you a $35 activation fee or $10 to $15 for a new card
the only time you should ever have to replace the sim is because its the wrong size or you or they switched network settings. like when AT&T did when it went to "orange" sims or when you do when you switch AT&T for tmobile
if you do go to a new sim, make sure to destroy the old sim, as it may contain personal information, including phone numbers and text messages. I've heard de-activated sim cards cannot be reused, so its worthless to a new user
when you move a sim card from one iPhone to another , your carrier may not know your current IMEI # ( the serial number of the phone ). this may come back to haunt you when it comes time to unlock your device
when moving sims, make sure the carrier knows your IMEI, the guy at the AT&T store might chuckle and not believe you, but trust me. make them put the imei on your account
missing features
when i moved my verizon sim from an iPhone 5 to a tmo iPhone 6, i had to wait for VOLTE and Visual Voice Mail to show up.
i think some features required me to power down my iPhone 6 eject sim, , turn it on, wait for it to say "NO SIM" , insert sim, to restore these features.
volte took a day or so to show up, and visual voice mail took less time to show up
you always want to move the sim card yourself. because if you ask for a new one, they will likely charge you a $35 activation fee or $10 to $15 for a new card
the only time you should ever have to replace the sim is because its the wrong size or you or they switched network settings. like when AT&T did when it went to "orange" sims or when you do when you switch AT&T for tmobile
if you do go to a new sim, make sure to destroy the old sim, as it may contain personal information, including phone numbers and text messages. I've heard de-activated sim cards cannot be reused, so its worthless to a new user
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why do you say to make sure you put the new imei on your account???
answer
we had AT&T go phones. they never put the imei numbers on our account. so when the 6 months were up, actually it was more like a year, and when we asked AT&T for our unlock. they denied the unlock. they said that the imei had no record of ever being associated to an AT&T account.
we went to the AT&T store and gave them the imei. the clerk chuckled and gave us a dumb line about how if AT&T didn't know the imei the sim card wouldn't work. which was not true at all. once we made them type that imei number , we sent in a new unlock request and it was approved
we had to repeat this very same procedure when i bought a used iPhone 3gs off of the net. insert sim, ask for unlock, get denied, , go to AT&T store to enter imei, ask for unlock, and it got granted.
answer
we had AT&T go phones. they never put the imei numbers on our account. so when the 6 months were up, actually it was more like a year, and when we asked AT&T for our unlock. they denied the unlock. they said that the imei had no record of ever being associated to an AT&T account.
we went to the AT&T store and gave them the imei. the clerk chuckled and gave us a dumb line about how if AT&T didn't know the imei the sim card wouldn't work. which was not true at all. once we made them type that imei number , we sent in a new unlock request and it was approved
we had to repeat this very same procedure when i bought a used iPhone 3gs off of the net. insert sim, ask for unlock, get denied, , go to AT&T store to enter imei, ask for unlock, and it got granted.
the only thing I can think of is if your nano-sim is lte compatible...do non lte nano-sims even exist?
When turned on, the phone registers to the network with the ICCID and IMEI. If it didn't register with the IMEI, then there'd be no point to blacklisting IMEIs. Also, I've never told AT&T that I bought a full price phone6 and moved my SIM over. Yet when I go to online account manager it shows an iphone6 on my line. So the carrier definitely knows the IMEI.
As to your unlock experience, perhaps that sometimes doesn't backflow to some system that's referenced for unlocks. This however is irrelevant to the OP since the 6 is a full price phone.
It's also possible that the provisioned services such as visual voicemail might not be correct if switching platforms between Android/iOS/Blackberry or similar. While the carrier does see the IMEI that doesn't mean they also filter the correct account changes down. This is also irrelevant in the OP's instance since it's a 5S to 6 switch.
Anyway, if concerned about it, looks like you can do the update online: https://www.att.com/olam/loginAction.olamexecute?target=simimei
uh
wrong
they don't care what your imei is. they only care about your imei is if you are activating a new line of service. or maybe if its blacklisted like you say. i never used a blacklisted phone. they only care about your imei to make sure its one of their devices on their whitelist
i proved this multiple times
1) having to go to the AT&T store and pestering them to register IMEI #s on a go phone. they would only unlock my phone once i told them the IMEI and they associated it to my go phone account. when i went to the AT&T store with our dumb zte phone on the go phone deal. they had no record of the imei. or any imei number on our account this was only last year. once we gave them the IMEI the unlock was granted. this happened again with the 3GS. we had to go to the store to give AT&T the IMEI of the 3gs. and they had to enter it manually
2) when i first got my iPhone 6 plus. it was an unlocked t-mobile model. i removed the sim card out of my verizon iPhone 5 and inserted it into the iPhone 6 plus. guess what.everything worked. CDMA calling worked. it was a 100% verizon iPhone. , verizon knew it wasn't a real verizon device, but guess what they did not care about the imei or meid because my sim card was already activated..
from my experience. once the sim card is activated and you move that sim card, they just don't keep track or even care what device you have.. except maybe sprint and its prepaid mvno carriers.
your service is tied to the individual sim card. it is not tied to your individual device
if AT&T go phone knows my imei # , then why was i turned down 5 times on two totally different phones for an unlock because they had no record of that imei being used???
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Huh? This makes no sense. The phone has the IMEI, not you. And obviously a phone knows its own IMEI.
Reread the first sentence of my second paragraph:
You seem to be assuming a binary "knows / doesn't know" of AT&T and a phone's IMEI. I suggest that this is a simplistic and incorrect assumption.
Did the system used for unlocking have a record of your phones? Apparently not, thus the experience you had. Does some other part of AT&T get the IMEI? Of course it does, as shown by my experience as well as the existence of IMEI blacklisting.
If you wish to continue with your claim that the carrier doesn't see the IMEI, please explain how IMEI blacklisting works without the carrier seeing the IMEI.
All you've presented is that the database for unlocking didn't get your phone IMEIs, which does not refute what I said.
You've also not said why that's at all relevant to the OP.
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If you wish to continue with your claim that the carrier doesn't see the IMEI, please explain how IMEI blacklisting works without the carrier seeing the IMEI.
All you've presented is that the database for unlocking didn't get your phone IMEIs, which does not refute what I said.
You've also not said why that's at all relevant to the OP.[/QUOTE]
like i said. i never tried blacklisting. but as far as AT&T and verizon goes. they don't seem to care about your imei once your sim is activated. and they feel that putting that imei # on your account is a big waste of time.
when you switch sim cards, you may need to ask AT&T or other carriers. to put that imei on your account. you need to make sure your imei is officially associated to your account so you get credit for it when it comes to unlocking.
case closed, end of discussion.
if you have a problem with anything i said, why don't you call verizon and ask them why they are allowing non verizon devices on their service?
now that i fulfilled my contract with verizon , we can start pestering them to why they are allowing non-verizon iPhone 6 plus phones on their service!!
yeah when i went to my verizon account, i didn't see my meid listed. all i saw was the sim card.
please buy some AT&T and verizon and t-mobile black listed iPhone 6 phones. 16gb should be enough. and try various prepaid sim cards and post paid sim cards. and see what happens. try all the combinations. I'm sure they are blacklisted and won't work, but the experiment wouldn't be a big waste of time as far as i am concerned.
you need to buy unlocked blacklisted iPhone 6 phones because they have the CDMA radio turned on and they work on Verizon
if you purchase other black listed phones , they won't work on verizon because of the cdma issue
the sim cards will need to be activated and associated with a device, before you switch them around
All you've presented is that the database for unlocking didn't get your phone IMEIs, which does not refute what I said.
You've also not said why that's at all relevant to the OP.[/QUOTE]
like i said. i never tried blacklisting. but as far as AT&T and verizon goes. they don't seem to care about your imei once your sim is activated. and they feel that putting that imei # on your account is a big waste of time.
when you switch sim cards, you may need to ask AT&T or other carriers. to put that imei on your account. you need to make sure your imei is officially associated to your account so you get credit for it when it comes to unlocking.
case closed, end of discussion.
if you have a problem with anything i said, why don't you call verizon and ask them why they are allowing non verizon devices on their service?
now that i fulfilled my contract with verizon , we can start pestering them to why they are allowing non-verizon iPhone 6 plus phones on their service!!
yeah when i went to my verizon account, i didn't see my meid listed. all i saw was the sim card.
please buy some AT&T and verizon and t-mobile black listed iPhone 6 phones. 16gb should be enough. and try various prepaid sim cards and post paid sim cards. and see what happens. try all the combinations. I'm sure they are blacklisted and won't work, but the experiment wouldn't be a big waste of time as far as i am concerned.
you need to buy unlocked blacklisted iPhone 6 phones because they have the CDMA radio turned on and they work on Verizon
if you purchase other black listed phones , they won't work on verizon because of the cdma issue
the sim cards will need to be activated and associated with a device, before you switch them around
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its just plain odd.
i go to my verizon.com i ask it to transfer my line of service from my iPhone 5 meid to my new iPhone 6 plus meid and i get denied. because, the iPhone 6 is not one of their devices. but if i put that sim card into the iPhone 6 plus without
telling verizon. it works.
please see my other threads
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6552532?searchText=unlocked t-mobile iphone 6 verizon
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1784285/
i go to my verizon.com i ask it to transfer my line of service from my iPhone 5 meid to my new iPhone 6 plus meid and i get denied. because, the iPhone 6 is not one of their devices. but if i put that sim card into the iPhone 6 plus without
telling verizon. it works.
please see my other threads
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6552532?searchText=unlocked t-mobile iphone 6 verizon
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1784285/
So you don't know what blacklisting is. Okay. The second piece is not in dispute, AT&T doesn't care about the IMEI. Irrelevant to the fact that they receive it when the phone registers to the network after being turned on. Your claim that they can't/don't see the IMEI is patently false as shown previously.
Irrelevant to the OP's question. Why do you keep bringing this up?
Verizon is also irrelevant as the discussion is about AT&T.
You still haven't addressed:
When you can do that do please come to the discussion. Don't waste time on Verizon or any other claims until you first can offer direct evidence of how IMEI blacklisting works WITHOUT AT&T seeing the phone's IMEI.