I'm new, and I see a lot of stupid questions, so here's one more

Hi everyone.

Alright this may get a bit complicated, so bear with me.

My father is a dip****, and for some dumb reason during March I let him select a cellphone plan for me. Since he initially paid for it, I didn't care, but now it's in my hands and I am now taking a hit for his moronic decision. The plan is $29.99/month, 200 anytime minutes, 1000 nights & weekends minutes, no free mobile-to-mobile calling, $0.10 per text message, all of your regular ass-rapings associated with cellphones served on a plate.

Anyways, I called Cingular today and I asked them whether or not it was possible to upgrade to their Nation 450 plan ($39.99/month, 450 anytime, 5000 N&W and free mobile-to-mobile) without an early termination fee. It is, so that's exactly what I'm going to do soon. Now for the bigger problem: I own a Sony Ericsson T237. This is, by a long shot, the worst phone that I've ever owned. I can go on and on about why it's so terrible, but we'll just leave that aside for now. I asked Cingular how much it would cost me to get a new Motorola RAZR since it's probably the best regular phone that they offer right now. The guy told me that because I have one year remaining on my plan, it would cost $249.99, which is a lot.

So that brings me to my question. I don't want to pay that much for a new phone and be tied down to Cingular, so I've become interested in unlocked phones. However I'm not exactly sure how this works. I know that there are people on eBay and small cellphone stores that sell unlocked phones, but a few of my friends have told me that it's possible to unlock it yourself. How do I go about doing this? "Unlocked" basically means that you can use it any provider as long as the phone has a sim card, correct?

There's no point in me spending $250 on a new RAZR when I can probably just buy it from somewhere already unlocked, or I can pay $160 for an unlocked Nokia 6230, which I like very much.

PS: Yes I did use the search function but it didn't help much.

---

› See More: I'm new, and I see a lot of stupid questions, so here's one more

do a google search on unlocking calculators. the 6230 is a great phone my friend has one on a cingular contract and he loves it. id go with the 6230 the razr is alot of hype. be diverse!

Originally Posted by ocelot

Hi everyone.

Alright this may get a bit complicated, so bear with me.

My father is a dip****, and for some dumb reason during March I let him select a cellphone plan for me. Since he initially paid for it, I didn't care, but now it's in my hands and I am now taking a hit for his moronic decision. The plan is $29.99/month, 200 anytime minutes, 1000 nights & weekends minutes, no free mobile-to-mobile calling, $0.10 per text message, all of your regular ass-rapings associated with cellphones served on a plate.

Anyways, I called Cingular today and I asked them whether or not it was possible to upgrade to their Nation 450 plan ($39.99/month, 450 anytime, 5000 N&W and free mobile-to-mobile) without an early termination fee. It is, so that's exactly what I'm going to do soon. Now for the bigger problem: I own a Sony Ericsson T237. This is, by a long shot, the worst phone that I've ever owned. I can go on and on about why it's so terrible, but we'll just leave that aside for now. I asked Cingular how much it would cost me to get a new Motorola RAZR since it's probably the best regular phone that they offer right now. The guy told me that because I have one year remaining on my plan, it would cost $249.99, which is a lot.

So that brings me to my question. I don't want to pay that much for a new phone and be tied down to Cingular, so I've become interested in unlocked phones. However I'm not exactly sure how this works. I know that there are people on eBay and small cellphone stores that sell unlocked phones, but a few of my friends have told me that it's possible to unlock it yourself. How do I go about doing this? "Unlocked" basically means that you can use it any provider as long as the phone has a sim card, correct?

There's no point in me spending $250 on a new RAZR when I can probably just buy it from somewhere already unlocked, or I can pay $160 for an unlocked Nokia 6230, which I like very much.

PS: Yes I did use the search function but it didn't help much.

depending on what sim card you have from cingular if its the all white older sim card you can use any unlocked phone but that new orange and white card i think its called a smart card wont work normally i tried it with my unlocked ATT nokia 3650 nothing happened

Originally Posted by drjekel_mrhyde

depending on what sim card you have from cingular if its the all white older sim card you can use any unlocked phone but that new orange and white card i think its called a smart card wont work normally i tried it with my unlocked ATT nokia 3650 nothing happened

Damn it, it says SmartChip on it. So what do I do now? Give up?

Originally Posted by ocelot

Damn it, it says SmartChip on it. So what do I do now? Give up?

try ebay thats the only thing i could think

Originally Posted by drjekel_mrhyde

try ebay thats the only thing i could think

A bunch of people just told me that what you said is not true, the SIM card should work with any unlocked phone.

Originally Posted by ocelot

A bunch of people just told me that what you said is not true, the SIM card should work with any unlocked phone.

make sure the unlocked phone was a cingular phone your card might work with others but my old att nokia 3650 didnt with the new cingular sim smart card but worked well with the old one and tmobile sim cards

Originally Posted by drjekel_mrhyde

make sure the unlocked phone was a cingular phone your card might work with others but my old att nokia 3650 didnt with the new cingular sim smart card but worked well with the old one and tmobile sim cards

if your nokia was locked to att, a cingular card wouldn't work. now if the nokia was unlocked, it would have worked.

Originally Posted by Nic Hitchins

if your nokia was locked to att, a cingular card wouldn't work. now if the nokia was unlocked, it would have worked.

my att phone was unlocked it worked fine with the old white cingular sim cards and tmobile cards but when cingular brung out that smart sim card it wouldnt work

is it possible that the smart sim you refer to was a different memory size than the one you took out. some phones require a differnt sim card than others, therefore deleting their compatability.

yeah cause i thing the one that worked in my phone was the 32k sim card but the new one the 64k smart chip didnt work maybe it just didnt work in nokia phones

that's what i was thinking immediately after you said your phone was unlocked and accepted other sims.

but even my junky c1300 has a 64k smart chip. just checked it. so i think the 32k may be the minority card.

do you i had to get rid of my nokia 3650 to get this razr and switch to cingular its cool but i miss my old phone i dropped it like 100 times this razr i dont know it seems fragile even with its metal case

what does your razr have in it?

i think there's even a 128k card. don't quote me, but i think it's for more high end, feature full phones.

Screw it I think I'm gonna get a 6230.