Any cell phone people?

[Dan de mingzi]

My daughter's birthday is coming. I plan to get her an iPhone, but I'm here in China and trying to find out how the plans work is challenging. She is with TMobile. I can buy her a phone and have it shipped to her, but I'm not sure whether there will be additional charges to get it hooked up, or the best way to do this. Anyone with experience with this?

 

 

She can get it much cheaper over there (US) - say $200 vs. $600 or $700 here - but she would need to sign a new (or re-up an existing) contract

 

Check out Blackberries, or Nokia, unless she just has to have an iPhone.

 

I have bought un-locked phones and activated them on T-Mobile - no problem. Don't know if they need to support the iPhones browser, though.

 

 

Thanks Randy. That's the pisser in the US. You have to buy plan with a cell phone company to use the phone. I love the China plans where you can buy any phone, anywhere and get a SIM card to operate. Very few restrictions.

 

I just got a new phone with AT&T and activated it...at that time my old Razor-V3 was de-activated...ATT told me that they can't have 2 phones on one cell number. I think I can get a sim card for it and it will be my phone for when I'm in the PRC. Will that work?

 

If it's a new phone it is probably locked; you just need to unlock it before going to China. Most phones you can unlock yourself pretty easily; go on google or ebay and search for your phone name and "Unlock". When you get to China buy a SIM card from a sidewalk stand and youre good to go

[Dan de mingzi]

My daughter's birthday is coming. I plan to get her an iPhone, but I'm here in China and trying to find out how the plans work is challenging. She is with TMobile. I can buy her a phone and have it shipped to her, but I'm not sure whether there will be additional charges to get it hooked up, or the best way to do this. Anyone with experience with this?

I agree with Randy... they are cheaper in the US.

 

It's now quite easy to unlock an iphone for T-Mobile; I've done quite a few.

 

I have stayed abreast of iphone pricing over the years and Craigslist and Ebay are two good places to find them.

 

The main consideration is how new you want it and whether 2G or 3G. The main concern with a used one is that since the battery is soldered inside the unit, you don't want one too old. Of course, new ones will cost more.

 

Since it is for someone else, I would want a newer one without scratches, then expect at least to pay $350.

 

Thanks David and Randy,

 

I looked around on the AT&T Web site and of course, they offer nice phones for under 200 USD, but it comes with a two-year contract. I don't want to burden my daughter with having to deal with unlocking the phone, which can be quite challenging and often leads to reduced functionalities and feature availability. So, I may just get her a new plan with AT&T.

 

However, if there is information out there that shows you can take an iPhone, unlock it, and stick SIM card from another provider, in this case, TMobile, and get it to work, then I may go with that. I would prefer not being locked into a highway robbery plan from a US cell phone provider.

 

Unlocking it for TMobile is a piece of cake; go here: http://blackra1n.com/ and download the exe file. Run it and follow the instructions; takes maybe 5 minutes. You can search the web for "Blackra1n" if you want more details, but it is really very simple.

 

Tmobile works fine on the iPhone; you won't get the visual voicemail and 3G won't work (ATT and Tmobile use different 3G standards, so the iPhone 3G only works on ATT). Everything else works that I've seen.

 

In China, my experience was that the unlock I did in the US did not work the first time I tried using a Chinese SIM card; so I took it to an electronics place in China that sells iPhones and paid the guy 100 RMB to unlock it for me. But that was 2 years ago, so this Blackra1n unlock may also work for China now.