Replacing broken cellphone

[mizuno]

My cell phone got wet in a heavy rainstorm and is now useless, but the simm card inside is fine. Is it possible for me to buy just a cheap cell phone from a store like Fry's or Best Buy and just stick my card in and have it work, or am I shit out of luck? If so, what exactly should I look for? Thanks for any help

[Elheru Aran]

My cell phone got wet in a heavy rainstorm and is now useless, but the simm card inside is fine. Is it possible for me to buy just a cheap cell phone from a store like Fry's or Best Buy and just stick my card in and have it work, or am I shit out of luck? If so, what exactly should I look for? Thanks for any help

You could chase down your nearest representative, probably a booth in the mall or some such, and ask. They could probably look up your plan, might be you could get a new phone for free or less than it cost originally.

[GuppyShark]

Depends on the phone you get.

A lot of prepaid mobile phones are network locked. That means you can't use any other network, only the prepaid network that subsidised the cost of the handset.

Other than that, your sim card should work in any phone unless it's a really old sim card.

[Keevan_Colton]

Basically you just need a new handset.

A cheap unlocked handset should do the trick fine, either that or a cheap handset from your network.

[Jade Falcon]

When I replaced my Nokia 3410 I was told by the Orange shop that the sim card was out of date. It wouldn't work at its best efficiency, but they were able to copy the details to a new sim card suitable for the new phone.

Who are you with? If you're in a shop do NOT buy the cheap 3G network phones (these are common in some places in the UK) they are locked to the network and require you to top up by £30 a month and you can't carry over unused credit.

Really it all depends on who you're with.

[Netko]

Sim card out of date basicly means you lose any operator provided extensions (like a special menu, auto-memorised operator numbers, etc.) and have a slightly lower address book capacity on the card. For ordinary usage, you don't really need to update the card, and, at least here, all the extended functionality has a equivalent system using standard stuff (either one of those voice menu calls or sending a SMS formated in a certain way).

[Keevan_Colton]

When I replaced my Nokia 3410 I was told by the Orange shop that the sim card was out of date. It wouldn't work at its best efficiency, but they were able to copy the details to a new sim card suitable for the new phone.

It sounds like you were had.

"wouldn't work at its best efficency" = "doesnt have as many features we can charge you for"

[GuppyShark]

It sounds like you were had.

"wouldn't work at its best efficency" = "doesnt have as many features we can charge you for"

Had? Hardly. They were going to charge the same regardless, and why keep an old, out of date SIM card when you can upgrade to a newer one and keep your data?

[Jade Falcon]

It sounds like you were had.

"wouldn't work at its best efficency" = "doesnt have as many features we can charge you for"

No, it didn't cost anything for the new sim. My very first phone had one of those credit card sized sims, and I thought that since these two were the same type it would be a matter of switching them over. The phone came with a sim card as it was, and all they did was copy over the contacts using a machine in the shop. There was no charge for the simcard itself.

[Pezzoni]

I've found that some electrical equipment will be fine when it gets wet, so long as you leave it time to dry before attempting to turn it on (typically two or three days).

I've put a mobile phone through the washing machine before, and carried on using it untill it hit upgrade time (a couple of months). Your mileage may vary though, I guess.

[RThurmont]

I had a few incidents last year where my annoying low-end Nokia phone was replaced by Verizon following mysterious malfu_nctions. I got a cellphone like two weeks before the Motorola RAZR came out in 2004, and have been in an extreme case of what we marketers call "post purchase dissonance" ever since. This fall my contract expires, and I'm certainly chucking my Nokia in favor of a more stylish Motorola product.

I do certainly feel sorry for people on the prepaid networks, however. In Ghana, that's nearly everyone (except the uberwealthy, like the MD of my client), and when you have to buy more units every week, it really gets old. I was given a prepaid loaner phone, and two minutes of air time with the United States would wipe it out totally. I wound up using the landline in my hotel (and was fortunate in that I got of the country before my clients saw the bill ).