I am considering buying a used smartphone online. I would just like to hear people’s experience in doing that. It looks to me that Swappa might be a good place, as they verify each phones IMEI before listing it. How did you buy one, and were you happy?
I used eBay.
First phone had a small digitizer problem that could have occured in transit. I am patient with my electronics but other people are often not. I didn’t do anything about it and enjoyed the phone for a year. Other people probably wouldn’t have done that.
Second phone was half the going price and in pristine condition. No problems. Love it.
Since it sounds like you are buying a CDMA phone, ebay is not the way for you since it’s very rare to get a clean IMEI due to how their setup works - most used CDMA phones are people bailing on their unpaid contracts and when you buy the phone you get stuck with the hassle of fixing everything as the contract and phone are linked in the CDMA setup (even then the phone company may never “clear” your phone for use). If you were doing GSM, ebay buying is a snap because the phone is completely independent of any contracts - it’s the contract and the SIM card in those phones that’s linked. Aside from defects or damage there’s no way to get an unusable phone due to a prior user.
Honestly I have no idea why the USA clings to CDMA…
Nitpick. CDMA phones use MEID, not IMEI.
All networks can block a device based on the appropriate unique identifier.
I see nothing in the OP to indicate it’s a CDMA device.
Actually I am looking for a GSM device (an at&t phone or unlocked). I am pretty sure they can lock a phone. I am not sure that the locking carries over to other countries. I am not sure where you are, Macca, but if you are not in the U.S., you could buy a phone with a blocked IMEI here in the U.S. and it would work fine over there because they don’t care. I think that in Europe they are not as quick to block a phone as they are here, but they can do it.
I basically suspect that most of the phones with blocked IMEIs are headed overseas.
I have bought android phones for Verizon off Swappa twice and was happy both times. The worst part of it is using PayPal. The first time I took the phone into my local Verizon store and had them register it (or whatever). The second time, after I dropped the first used phone, I just did it on line. Easy.
Lately though, it occurs to me that even going month to month the price of an upgrade is built into what I am paying and I should not buy used phones. So last week, I gave up my unlimited data plan (which I didn’t really make use of anyway), signed a cheaper two year contract and got my wife an iPhone 5 for $100.
YMMV.
Remember, the previous owner almost certainly used it every time he or she shat, so try not to visualize the acres and acres of feces expelled while the device was in use.
I bought a Motorola Photon (CDMA & GSM) and my friend bought a Motorola Droid X2 on eBay. We searched for “motorola photon excellent” and “droid x2 excellent”, made sure the photos and description matched our needs, made sure the seller stated the phone was ready to activate, and made sure the seller had good feedback. Both of us received like-new phones for just over $100.
Now OP, if you’re like me and wanted a smartphone to use on WiFi be aware that the big companies will not activate a smartphone without a ~$70 per month phone+data plan. There are companies like PagePlus that will activate older Verizon phones on voice+text only plans.
Well, technically you can do a wi-fi only phone for $0 but it’s limited to just that - strictly wi-fi. If you are in the US and plan to call/text US numbers, you can use Google Voice to do it for free. You would then use an app like GrooveIP to do VoIP calls, using the Google Voice account to call and text through. I tested it out on an old Nexus, and you can make and receive calls, texts, and voicemails on the phone even without a SIM card at all. Of course, it only works on wi-fi and that’s absolutely it. So it’s not useful for a lot of people but it is the lowest cost USA option out there if you had to do something in a pinch and you had no money.
What I intend to do is use AT&Ts GoPhone (prepaid) for phone and text & use wifi for data. I find this fills most of my needs for $25 every three months. I don’t really need data all the time. I would love a pay as you go data plan, but I can get along without it.
I thought I would update this thread with my own experience, which was not good. I used Swappa, and bought a Galaxy s4 that was represented as being in mint condition. When I got it, it did indeed boot up and worked fine. I transferred my GoPhone Sim into it and got service. Within a week, problems surfaced. It would turn off in my pocket. It would usually boot back up, but not always. The problems got worse. In retrospect, it was fairly obvious that the seller knew about the problems (for reasons that I won’t explain here).
In researching the problem, I found that it was not an uncommon problem with the S4 (although it may be multiple problems with a common symptom). The usual advice was to bring it back to your carrier or Samsung.
I suspect that there are many glitchy phones out there in the used market. I also suspect that there are many more problematic phones when you are looking for the current model. Why would people attempt to sell an S4? It’s not as if they are trading up to an S5. And yes, I feel foolish for not asking myself that question earlier.