Mobile Phone advice (OT)

[critcher]

Just like their bank accounts.

[JoeJoe]

Most smart phones are "locked" to a specific network, so simply transferring the SIM to another phone (unless bought from EE) will not work.

You need to either:

1. Buy a phone from EE; or
2. Buy an "unlocked/SIM-free" phone;
3. Buy any phone and pay

[Michael Chare]

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini payg from 3 for £100 + Sim and use it with a Vodafone contract Sim. Unlike some of the cheaper Android phones the phone is fast enough to be usable. (It was a special offer at the time which sold out very quickly)

[John Rumm]

Walk into argos and by a Moto G - serious amount of grunt for the money.

[Tim+]

Potentially expensively misleading. Many phones may be unlocked cheaply but by no means all.

Tim

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Vodaphone did it while I waited. Walked in with a working old phone and walked out with a working new one. Free.

Bought a new simm card for the old phone in Tesco (different number, obviously) so have it as a spare.

[Simon Mason]

Just bought this for half the price of a new one.

[Capitol]

Yes.

[JoeJoe]

Fair enough - just Google first to make sure the model can be unlocked before you buy.

I agree that Moto G is the way to go in terms of value for money.

[Muddymike]

I buy mobile handsets for my employers. When paid for in full without contract every phone I have ever bought has been completely free of any network tie. So no need to unlock whatever sim we put in them.

Also when issuing new sim cards these days they are all multi format. You just break the sim out of the card to the size needed for the phone. I have in the past broken them out to a large size sim to copy data from the old handset, then break it down again to the correct size for the new handset

These days SIM cards come in three sizes:

Standard SIM (15 x 25mm) Micro SIM (12 x 15mm) Nano SIM (8.8 x 12.3mm)

Mike

[Huge]

[45 lines snipped]

Most phone shops have a tool to cut them down (at least from Standard to Micro).

[Simon Mason]

What about my SIM though?

What size is that?

[Andy Burns]

Actually that's a Mini SIM, the full size was same as a credit card the first GSM phone I had for work (Siemens S3 I think) used one

[John Rumm]

That's usually the case from the phone shops, but you have to watch the supermarkets. I know with Tesco for example, it was the case that if you walk in and buy a PAYG phone it will often still be tied to their PAYG network.

Unless Apple and Google get their way and do away with SIM cards altogether. ;-)

[Muddymike]

No tool is needed. They are pre punched to just break out at the required size.

Mike

[whisky-dave]

Why are they needed ?

[Tim+]

They are *now*, but his existing sim may not be pre-punched.

Tim

[Huge]

New ones are.

[DerbyBorn]

Mine is not pre-punched - it is ancient.

[bert]

In article , DerbyBorn writes

Yes. They did for me.