I got an iPhone 6s when I signed up with Virgin Mobile, which became @boostmobile. Three things coincided to induce me to get a new phone: Boost Mobile’s poor coverage and their ‘sucks to be you’ attitude, my wife’s satisfaction with @xfinity, and my iPhone’s inability to hold a charge on its battery. Since a new battery would have cost $70 and a new iPhone SE from Xfinity was only $99 with the promotion they had at the time, I opted to switch to Xfinity and get the new phone. (Xfinity’s coverage has been great, as has the phone.)
I kayak, and have little confidence with ‘waterproof’ pouches. (I’ve recently bought one, but have yet to use it.) I don’t want to risk my ‘new’ phone in the salt water. I decided to get a new battery (now $75 – and they’ve been discontinued) for the 6s just so I could take snaps with its camera when I’m on the water. It doesn’t have a SIM card, but I can connect to WiFi.
Finally, the question!
Suppose I wanted to use the old iPhone 6s as a phone. Could I just get a SIM card from, say, Tracphone and have full functionality? Or is the phone ‘locked’ by Boost Mobile, and that wouldn’t work?
No, I don’t need an answer fast. I have the SE for everything except taking pictures on the water. I’m just curious if I could do this.
What makes you think your iPhone is SIM-locked? I doubt it, but on an iPhone 6S go to Settings → General → About and scroll to the bottom and check that it says “No SIM restrictions” under Carrier Lock.
If it is locked, contact Boost to get them to unlock it. Carriers will unlock the phone after the contract is up. They are required to:
However, I’m not sure exactly how it works if you are not a current customer. You may want to call the Boost sales number to get a real person who can tell you who to call.
Didn’t know it was legal to lock a phone that was not on contract…
you could also try doctorsim.com or another place that has the software to generate unlock codes [disclaimer: I am not associated with them and cannot vouch for their services]
It’s not, but that doesn’t make carriers give a damn. You can go to the trouble of taking the phone to a store, desperately attempting to get help, lose the help immediately once it’s clear that you’re neither a sale prospect or even a current customer, get someone else’s help, and get them to do the unlock.
If you don’t care enough to go through that rigmarole, why would your former carrier?
This silliness is why I’m willing to pay full retail for a non-carrier device.
It’s… complicated. As a former tech support rep for T-Mobile, we did unlocks as part of our day, and depending on the platform, the OS, and status it was either easy-peasy or a chore. For the record, as the tech has gotten better, it had gotten a lot easier.
The technical answer, is that if the owner (come back to this in a sec) requests, you have to unlock the device. Sure, there are a lot of little niggles (for example, an old phone that’s no longer on the network can be a lot harder), but the big problem is the whole owner issue.
For example, you can dump your contract with a carrier at any time, but that doesn’t mean the phone is paid for yet! Or, if the person requesting the unlock isn’t the named party on the carrier or financing contract. Or if you bought your phone from a third party, but it’s still in the carrier’s systems as belonging to your parent / ex-wife / boyfriend.
So yeah, although carriers have gotten a lot better about offering unlocks more proactively (and there were always exceptions for weird cases) or even automatically, there were always hiccups in the system.
Oh, to be clear, the various promos were and remain retention tools - because that phone you’re getting free or 50% off or what have you are almost always discounted in the form of a subsidy to your monthly payments - and if you pay it off early, you lose those too.
So while not exactly a scam, it’s certainly not out of the carrier’s good intentions either. And I’m leaving out certain actual, implemented scams that try to take advantage of various unlock policies. And the process is probably needlessly complicated - still there are actually a ton of semi-common issues with an unlock (I only listed a few above) that are actually happening out of good faith or compliance with established consumer protection laws.
As I understood, in Canada, the carrier must unlock a phone when asked if the contract is expired. AFAIK they no longer sell locked phones. I assume this is the case too in the USA.
I seem to recall (it’s been a while) that an iPhone can be unlocked via WiFi when the carrier arranges for it?
All the SIM cards I’ve ever gotten were a set of perforated cardboard - depending on what size, regular, mini, micro, nano, you pushed out the appropraite perforation of cardboard for the correct size of SIM. I have occasionally tested older iPhones by using the appropriate cardboard insert and pushing in my current nano nanSIM. (I have a 3, a 4, 6, 6s, 8, and 8pro (which my in-laws are using). I make a point of charging them then turning them off each first of the month).
So when you buy a SIM see if you get the cardboad sizing pieces included, and keep them handy for any alternate use.
No sure if the USA has intelligent pay-as-you-go. The last time I checked in Canada, there was no such thing. If you paid for minutes with any fake “pay as you go” plan, then the payment evaporated within a month. So essentially a cheap(?) “pay by the month” instead.
OK, so they are being, shall we say, unhelpful, even though they are legally obligated to help you.
Have you tried any of the myriad web sites / software that purport to calculate the network control key for you? Or, to avoid scams, the local phone shop?
I have a bunch of old phones, but I cannot really test anything because they are naturally all unlocked.
I had been using the same (Motorola) phone on TracFone for about 3 years when it had a sudden USB port failure (so no recharging it). So I went for a quick replacement at a local store. When I found one that actually still bad them, with TracFone you are supposed to only be able to buy a new phone when you also buy a contract card, but I told the checkout guy that I needed it to replace a phone that already had an account and he had no problem (conceptionally or practically) selling me the phone without a plan. I swapped the SIM between phones with no problem. Within days of getting the new phone, TracFone tects to point out that they are required to unlock their phones if you ask if you meet their minimum terms (I think one year of use). I think I just had to text “unlock” to that number and give my IMEI. They then texted back with two long code numbers. I then had to call (not text) a different automated number and enter those two codes. I think it was within minutes that the brand new phone was unlocked. Pretty smooth and simple, really. (A few month later I finally moved off TracFone for a better deal and bought a new new phone because the old new phone was profoundly awful, but I at least do still have it as an emergency backup.)
BTW, it seems there may be no legal obligation in the US. This FCC FAQ talks about carriers that signed onto the CTIA Consumer Code for Wireless Service. And that code is a voluntary agreement within the industry:
So refusing to unlock a phone (apparently) would be only a violation of an agreement (if they are a signatory) and not of any federal law.
Here’s a picture of the pop-out set of sim sizes in the wikipedia article - the top item on the right.
Maybe in some places the substrate is plastic, but as far as I can tell what I see when I’ve bought SIMs (usually with phone renewal) it is a cardboard card, and the full-sized SIM is also a perforated pop-out (“cut-out”?) from the full card, which appears to be cardboard. Yes, the central micro-SIM contains a chip and contacts, but mounted on cardboard.
Cardboard, all the way down. Not even glossy finish (is that because the gloss could be conductive?)