Buying one through Apple online at the moment, but it’s roughly $1300 with taxes. So I have myself a little nervous at the cost. Thanks in advance for answering. 👍
Yeah, should tell you it’s unlocked at checkout. Just don’t select a provider. Then, contact yours and ask for instructions to set it up.
It works fine. I’ve bought a couple iPhone pros from Apple to use with different carriers. One with Verizon and the other with cricket and later mint. The main difference used to be that Verizon/sprint phones supported fewer GSM bands than AT&T and T-Mobile phones, which could be relevant in Europe or Asia, but now Apple only sells one model. This time I got my phone from Verizon for “free” by trading in an obsolete iPhone with a broken screen. They claim they automatically unlock the phone after 90 days. It was about $120 out of pocket for a 16 pro.
If you are in Canada they have to sell them unlocked. Not sure your location.
I remember when I bought my iPhone 3GS back in the day.
The only option was to buy it carrier locked on a one or two year plan in my country. Of course it was exclusive to a carrier that wasn’t my choice of carrier.
I signed up, put it in a drawer and waited for the imminent jailbreak and unlocked modem firmware. It dropped two weeks later. After that one year of payments they unlocked it through official means.
New iPhones bought from Apple that are unlocked “connect to any carrier later” work on all the networks in the us. Once upon a time, there was an “unlocked” phone - meaning you could change the sim and the phone wasn’t locked to a contract. But you still had to match the phone to the major carrier. For example, an att phone could be unlocked, and then used on straighttalk (becasue straighttalk resold att network). But it wouldn’t work on Verizon or T-Mobile because they were different networks.
That’s not a thing anymore with iPhones and hasn’t been for a long time. An unlocked iPhone can be used with any carrier that supports esims.
If your old phone is still on a contract - you may not be able to transfer the phone number, or have to request an unlock, or any other shenanigans. But the new iPhone will still work on whatever network you take it to.
Ideally, your contract is done, you buy new unlocked iPhone, you take it to your existing or a new carrier, you say “I bought a new unlocked phone, I want to set it up new, and I want you to transfer my number” a prime time carrier will just make this happen for you. A reseller can be a little more of a pain in the arse.
Personally I’ve been happy with the prepaid plans from straight talk - despite their setup process sucking. If you call them and get a person to help it goes pretty smooth. And the service is indistinguishable for a much cheaper price once it’s setup. I’m pretty sure this goes for most resellers.
Good luck - you’ll be fine!
That’s what I was worried about lol, glad those days are over and I can just pick “Connect to any Carrier later” option.
I’m debating on whether larger storage is worth it, 256GB to 512GB for $200 more. Any thoughts? Appreciate the detailed feedback.
For what it’s worth, choosing the T-Mobile option wouldn’t lock it to T-Mobile. It just includes some extra setup stuff, IIRC. If you’re buying it from Apple it isn’t carrier locked (with the exception of an AT&T installment plan, not sure if they still offer that).
iPhones have no sd card slots, so I’d get the bigger storage (if that money isn’t that tight)
How much is your current iphone storage and how much is filled?
Currently it’s 97.56GB out of 128GB. So around 26% free space? Guessing 256GB will be enough.
Once upon a time, there was an “unlocked” phone - meaning you could change the sim and the phone wasn’t locked to a contract. But you still had to match the phone to the major carrier.
Ah yes, those confusing GSM/CDMA days. They were like 2g or 3g tech (not sure), but eventually they all converged with 4G and VoLTE. I’m so glad that bs was done.
USA? You’d be doing eSim and depending on carrier, it might be just loggining in and set up eSim, or if its T-Mobile, they have dumbass requirement for you to contact customer support for eSim, so that may take up to an hour.
If its non-USA, and you have a physical sim, just put in sim and its ready.
If you have an existing iPhone with T-Mobile, you can activate it with your previous phone which is much easier than calling customer support.
(As far as I know) That technically isn’t directly from iphone to iphone, it needs tmobile servers to approve the transfer (since they’re gonna see different imei), but who knows what weird policies tmobile might have, hopefully, they don’t also require a customer service chat to do an iphone to iphome esim transfer.
Oh I’m saying this because I personally did this from an iPhone XS with a physical sim to a new iPhone with only eSIMs, so at least in my experience this works.
