The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Exactly my situation (or will be a week or so after the SDK comes out).

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Same question here. Of course they'll let you buy a NEW iPhone and activate it (keeping your same number, contract, etc.). So what about your OLD iPhone?? What if you want to give it away or (gasp) sell it??

Has anyone tried pulling the SIM from your current iPhone and installing it into a new one, then pulling the SIM from the inactivated/new iPhone and swapping it into the old? Why wouldn't that work?

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Okay. I did just that last night. I bought the 16gb and activated it using my current 8gb's phone number with the new sim. This made the sim in my old 8gb useless. I had to go back to the Apple store and demand to speak to a manager to have Apple take ownership of activating the old 8gb iPhone with my wife's phone number. What he did was very generous. He walked with me to the AT&T cart across the Apple store and asked for a new SIM for me and to have them assign that SIM to my wife's phone number. He then took the 8gb iPhone back to the Genius Bar and had a Genius try to activate that phone. Well, as it turned out, the 8gb iPhone wouldn't activate with the new SIM but it worked just fine with the other SIM in the new 16gb iPhone. So, the manager went ahead and exchanged the old 8gb for a new one for me and activated that one. Sweet and nice of him I must say. Here's what happened in order:

1. I had old 8g iPhone with my AT&T phone number.
2. I bought new 16gb iPhone for me.
3. I activated the new 16gb iPhone with my AT&T phone number.
4. This de-activated the SIM in the old 8GB iPhone.
5. I restored the 8gb iPhone with hopes it would ask me to activate it but it only kept showing my own phone number and wourlnd't allow me to change the number.
6. I called AT&T for assistance they sent me to Apple claiming only they could help me.
7. I went to Apple Store where Genius said only AT&T could swap the SIM in the 8gb iPhone so I can use it with another phone in my AT&T account.
8. Went to AT&T booth in same mall where their manager said only Apple knew how to remove the SIM card and therefore only they could help me.
9. Went back to Apple Store where I demanded that the Store Manager take ownership of this mess or refund my money on the 16gb iPhone and properly re-activate my 8gb iPhone.
10. Apple Manager went with me to AT&T store to get new SIM and mate the IMEI number of the 8gb iPhone to the new SIM.
11. Went back to Apple store where Manager had Genius activate the 8gb iPhone for me.
12. When the 8gb iPhone kept giving me invalid SIM message, the Manager approved an 8gb iPhone swap.
13. Activated replacement 8gb iPhone swap with new SIM and my wife's phone number.
14. Both 16gb iPhone activated with my phone number and 8gb iPhone actiaveted with my wife's phone number.

In the end I ended up with a new 16gb iPhone and a new 8gb iPhone which replaced my 4 month old 8gb iPhone :) Not what I asked for originally but I guess it was worth my hassles.

In summary, your experience may be better than mine. Might I suggest you insert the old iPhone's SIM in the new 16gb iPhone and activate that way. Then take the new 16gb iPhones, unactivated SIM and insert it in the old 8gb iPhone and attempt to activate it with your wife's phone number. If that doesn't work, however, then it might be what I thought from the beginning which is, a new SIM would be required that would be programmed by AT&T to work with the IMEI number of the 8gb iPhone since that 8gb iPhone's original SIM was married to it from day 1. Make sense?

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(gulp) thanks for the detailed info, apeguero. That does not bode well - I don't see the officially policy becoming "give purchasers a new iPhone to replace the first one they bought".

I haven't tried it yet, but by all accounts the SIM card swap method doesn't work. Indeed, it sounds like we're screwed, unless this becomes a scandal of some kind that they'll be forced to address (perhaps AT&T will have to issue separate SIM cards?).

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Couldn't you just do a restore (without restoring your backup) before activating the 16GB. This way when you plug in your old 8GB it will ask to activate it, etc.

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I live out in the boonies, and I think EDGE will be faster for me than non-existent 3G. I would like GPS, though.

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If you "purchase" your phone (Moto, Sony, LG etc.) from AT&T they normally pay for part of the phone. In this case you would now have a new 2 year agreement on top of whatever time was left on your old contract.

If you purchase an unlocked or Apple iPhone you (the consumer) fronts the entire cost of the phone. In this case you should not need a new 2 year contract.

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What Daryl said regarding the cost of phone purchases is correct. Also keep in mind that when you purchase a phone from a carrier in the United States, 99% of the time it will be endowed with a subsidy lock that prevents you from using that phone on a different network. This is what Daryl was talking about when he said "they normally pay for part of the phone." US carriers feel that they can give such "wonderful" discounts because you are guaranteeing to use their services for a specific number of years. You can always purchase a phone at its full price without extending/renewing your contract, but it will still have all the carrier's junk (you know, the programs designed to get people who don't have data plans to run up their bills at exorbitant rates, or the messy links that always take you to the carrier's mobile site for purchasing games or ringtones -- as if you'd ever want to do that instead of transferring it for free over Bluetooth or USB!). However, the iPhone upgrade is a unique case, because Apple requires an additional step before use of the phone: you must first activate the phone using iTunes and an AT&T account/SIM card combo.

I have AT&T service (first the "legacy" AT&T Wireless, then I became Cingular "Blue", Cingular "Orange", and now we're back to [the new] AT&T...but I digress). Over the summer I purchased an unlocked KRZR from Motorola. All I had to do was swap out the SIM card from my subsidized, Cingular-branded Nokia 6102i, and place it in the KRZR. Everything worked seamlessly. In fact, my old ("legacy") AT&T Wireless phone has the subsidy lock removed, so I now am able to put my SIM card in that phone as well without ever contacting the manufacturers or (the new) AT&T.

This is just one of the things that separates GSM technology from the CDMA variant that Verizon and Sprint use. Because every SIM card has a unique "subscriber number," a carrier needs only to link that number to a specific account and telephone number. Then, whenever a (GSM) phone turns on, it reads the subscriber number and registers itself with the home network using that number. This is, of course, an overly-simplified account of what actually happens, as each carrier has their own specific roaming partners, et cetera, but it does show that Apple is apparently doing some fishy stuff behind-the-scenes when it comes to their iPhone and the SIM it accepts. I mean, why wouldn't the iPhone be able to accept any valid AT&T SIM card thrown at it? Every other GSM phone -- even the subsidized ones -- work seamlessly with the other "home network" SIMs...

That was a rather long semi-rant, but to answer your question MacBookOwner, no, AT&T's phones don't usually reject a SIM card it didn't ship with. Also note that it *is* possible to go into an AT&T store and ask for service with only a SIM card. This is great because they don't even require you to buy a phone when signing up! Although if they're giving one away for free at that time, it wouldn't hurt to just get that as a backup phone or a gift for a cousin/niece/nephew/friend who also has AT&T service ;)

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Seeing as it's an entirely different phone - one with 16 GB vs. 4 or 8 GB, of course you have to pay for it.

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But that was an 8 GB for 8 GB swap. It's sounding like there's some difference (perhaps at the firmware level) that is blocking the use of an 8 GB iPhone's SIM in a 16 GB model... or something.

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