Dumb Q - buying a new phone for existing plan?

I'm a fairly new Cingular customer (4 months or so) on a 2 year plan.
I signed on in a rush away from Sprint and took whatever phones they
wanted to give me for free (I got two, one for my wife). I'm now
interested in upgrading but all of the Cingular stores, the Cingular
web site and even all of the online third party retailers I can find
will only sell phones with a new plan.

I hated Sprint but at least you could just buy a phone from their
site, with or without a plan, at a reasonable price.

How can I get a new phone without waiting 20 more months to sign a new
contract? You'd think the phone manufacturers would *want* people to
buy phones but they don't seem to make it easy. Is my only recourse
Ebay?

Related question - couple guys I know have just bought the Motorola
V300 for T-Mobile. Now, I know that in New York, T-Mobile and
Cingular share the same network. I'm a total newbie to this whole GSM
thing but I've been reading about "unlocking" phones - if I found an
unlocked V300 somewhere, could I simply remove my sim card from my
current phone and stick it in the V300 and it'd just work, without
even calling Cingular or anything? I'm more interested in the V300
than the V400 that Cingular offers, and don't want to pay the extra
that I'm sure the V400 would cost.

Thanks for any help/advice,

// Jeff Williams
// [email protected]

---

› See More: Dumb Q - buying a new phone for existing plan?

On 1 Mar 2004 14:34:44 -0800, [email protected] (Jeff Williams)
wrote:

>Related question - couple guys I know have just bought the Motorola
>V300 for T-Mobile. Now, I know that in New York, T-Mobile and
>Cingular share the same network. I'm a total newbie to this whole GSM
>thing but I've been reading about "unlocking" phones - if I found an
>unlocked V300 somewhere, could I simply remove my sim card from my
>current phone and stick it in the V300 and it'd just work, without
>even calling Cingular or anything? I'm more interested in the V300
>than the V400 that Cingular offers, and don't want to pay the extra
>that I'm sure the V400 would cost.

With GSM you can use any phone and just swap the SIM card. If you're
on one network such as cingular you can either swap it with another
GSM cingular phone or any unlocked GSM phone.

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remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply

"Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm a fairly new Cingular customer (4 months or so) on a 2 year plan.
> I signed on in a rush away from Sprint and took whatever phones they
> wanted to give me for free (I got two, one for my wife). I'm now
> interested in upgrading but all of the Cingular stores, the Cingular
> web site and even all of the online third party retailers I can find
> will only sell phones with a new plan.
>
> I hated Sprint but at least you could just buy a phone from their
> site, with or without a plan, at a reasonable price.
>
> How can I get a new phone without waiting 20 more months to sign a new
> contract? You'd think the phone manufacturers would *want* people to
> buy phones but they don't seem to make it easy. Is my only recourse
> Ebay?
>
> Related question - couple guys I know have just bought the Motorola
> V300 for T-Mobile. Now, I know that in New York, T-Mobile and
> Cingular share the same network. I'm a total newbie to this whole GSM
> thing but I've been reading about "unlocking" phones - if I found an
> unlocked V300 somewhere, could I simply remove my sim card from my
> current phone and stick it in the V300 and it'd just work, without
> even calling Cingular or anything? I'm more interested in the V300
> than the V400 that Cingular offers, and don't want to pay the extra
> that I'm sure the V400 would cost.

You want to be certain that whatever phone you buy for Cingular, that it
supports both 850 and 1900 Mhz. T-Mobile phones typically are 1900 Mhz only.
The V300 isn't suitable for Cingular.

Even in Cingular's 1900 Mhz-only areas, once the merger with AT&T occurs
you'll want that 850 Mhz capability. The weakest areas of Cingular's network
are in the 1900 Mhz areas, and these areas will benefit greatly from the
merger, i.e. New York Metro Area, and the entire western region. By the time
the merger occurs, the bandwidth clearing of TDMA from 850Mhz will be nearly
complete, and GSM coverage should equal that of CDMA.

Most of the web merchants selling unlocked phones are selling tri-band world
phones, but these aren't capable of 850 Mhz. A compatible world phone would
be quad band (i.e. Motorola V500 or NEC 525).

I.e. see: http://sentimentalgift.com/worcelphon.html, but the only dual band
phone is the Nokia 6800.

Also see: http://store.ustronics.us/cellularphones2.html

When you see the prices for these unlocked phones, you'll realize that you
would be better off terminating your Cingular service, paying the
termination fee, and signing up again to get a subsidized phone that you
like. This would likely cost you only $250 or so. Prior the deployment of
850 Mhz GSM in the U.S., things were much easier because there were a lot of
relatively inexpensive tri-band world phones available.

I always warn people to not get enticed by "free" phones, as the free phones
are usually not the greatest. What's $50-100 when you're spending $35+ per
month on service. Also, the phones they try not to sell you are usually the
best ones (just went through this with Verizon, they absolutely did not want
to sell me the phone I wanted, said it was discontinued, available only to
new subscribers, etc.).

At this juncture, I'd try to get the Nokia 6340i GAIT phone as it supports
both TDMA frequencies, both GSM frequencies for the U.S., as well as AMPS.
Until GSM coverage is ubiquitous in the U.S., this is a the best handset,
see:
http://store.ustronics.us/no63gsmuncep.html

You can see my handset recommendations at:
http://nordicgroup.us/ssub/handset.htm

You might want to wait for a Cingular contract change that would let you out
of your contract, but there's no guarantee that this will occur as the
carriers have gotten more sophisticated with their contracts.

Steve
Cell Academician
XXcellacademicianXX@XXhotmailXXcomXX (fix the address to respond)

A little bit cheaper here:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/digitalbynet/motorola.html
Still around $300 for unlocked V300 and V400.
mikey




"Steven M. Scharf" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
"Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm a fairly new Cingular customer (4 months or so) on a 2 year plan.
> I signed on in a rush away from Sprint and took whatever phones they
> wanted to give me for free (I got two, one for my wife). I'm now
> interested in upgrading but all of the Cingular stores, the Cingular
> web site and even all of the online third party retailers I can find
> will only sell phones with a new plan.
>
> I hated Sprint but at least you could just buy a phone from their
> site, with or without a plan, at a reasonable price.
>
> How can I get a new phone without waiting 20 more months to sign a new
> contract? You'd think the phone manufacturers would *want* people to
> buy phones but they don't seem to make it easy. Is my only recourse
> Ebay?
>
> Related question - couple guys I know have just bought the Motorola
> V300 for T-Mobile. Now, I know that in New York, T-Mobile and
> Cingular share the same network. I'm a total newbie to this whole GSM
> thing but I've been reading about "unlocking" phones - if I found an
> unlocked V300 somewhere, could I simply remove my sim card from my
> current phone and stick it in the V300 and it'd just work, without
> even calling Cingular or anything? I'm more interested in the V300
> than the V400 that Cingular offers, and don't want to pay the extra
> that I'm sure the V400 would cost.

You want to be certain that whatever phone you buy for Cingular, that it
supports both 850 and 1900 Mhz. T-Mobile phones typically are 1900 Mhz only.
The V300 isn't suitable for Cingular.

Even in Cingular's 1900 Mhz-only areas, once the merger with AT&T occurs
you'll want that 850 Mhz capability. The weakest areas of Cingular's network
are in the 1900 Mhz areas, and these areas will benefit greatly from the
merger, i.e. New York Metro Area, and the entire western region. By the time
the merger occurs, the bandwidth clearing of TDMA from 850Mhz will be nearly
complete, and GSM coverage should equal that of CDMA.

Most of the web merchants selling unlocked phones are selling tri-band world
phones, but these aren't capable of 850 Mhz. A compatible world phone would
be quad band (i.e. Motorola V500 or NEC 525).

I.e. see: http://sentimentalgift.com/worcelphon.html, but the only dual band
phone is the Nokia 6800.

Also see: http://store.ustronics.us/cellularphones2.html

When you see the prices for these unlocked phones, you'll realize that you
would be better off terminating your Cingular service, paying the
termination fee, and signing up again to get a subsidized phone that you
like. This would likely cost you only $250 or so. Prior the deployment of
850 Mhz GSM in the U.S., things were much easier because there were a lot of
relatively inexpensive tri-band world phones available.

I always warn people to not get enticed by "free" phones, as the free phones
are usually not the greatest. What's $50-100 when you're spending $35+ per
month on service. Also, the phones they try not to sell you are usually the
best ones (just went through this with Verizon, they absolutely did not want
to sell me the phone I wanted, said it was discontinued, available only to
new subscribers, etc.).

At this juncture, I'd try to get the Nokia 6340i GAIT phone as it supports
both TDMA frequencies, both GSM frequencies for the U.S., as well as AMPS.
Until GSM coverage is ubiquitous in the U.S., this is a the best handset,
see:
http://store.ustronics.us/no63gsmuncep.html

You can see my handset recommendations at:
http://nordicgroup.us/ssub/handset.htm

You might want to wait for a Cingular contract change that would let you out
of your contract, but there's no guarantee that this will occur as the
carriers have gotten more sophisticated with their contracts.

Steve
Cell Academician
XXcellacademicianXX@XXhotmailXXcomXX (fix the address to respond)