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How can they "Ships Activated" for upgrades?

B

bella92108

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 1, 2006
1,610
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So everything the Apple and AT&T camps have stated is that for those who are eligible they can order through AT&T or Apple.com and will have "the convenience of having the phone shipped to your home pre-activated" but what does that really mean?

It's not like in the past, where the device arrives, you pop out your SIM, shove it in and you're up and running, no, THINK DIFFERENT this time, you'll have a new sim (micro baby, micro!) that'll need activation. If what they say is correct, then the micro sim will have to either be activated at time of shipping (which would deactivate your 3G or 3GS in hand for 24 hours while fedex delivers your new activated phone), or you'll have to go through some sort of enabling process once it arrives.

I tend to think the latter, but I'm interested if anyone's seen anything about this process anywhere. I have scoured both their sites, and they're tight-lipped about the procedure. Anyone?
 
I think that they know what they are doing. I have never had to take out my sim card and put it in the new phone. :confused:
 
Tara Luvs Apple said:
I think that they know what they are doing. I have never had to take out my sim card and put it in the new phone. :confused:
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for the utterly useless post.

So do tell, how, in the past, have you been able to move to the new phone without doing anything online, and without moving your SIM card (NOT UPGRADING IN THE STORE)?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

I've read that it will be shipped with a microSIM and you activate it via iTunes.
 
bella92108 said:
So everything the Apple and AT&T camps have stated is that for those who are eligible they can order through AT&T or Apple.com and will have "the convenience of having the phone shipped to your home pre-activated" but what does that really mean?

It's not like in the past, where the device arrives, you pop out your SIM, shove it in and you're up and running, no, THINK DIFFERENT this time, you'll have a new sim (micro baby, micro!) that'll need activation. If what they say is correct, then the micro sim will have to either be activated at time of shipping (which would deactivate your 3G or 3GS in hand for 24 hours while fedex delivers your new activated phone), or you'll have to go through some sort of enabling process once it arrives.

I tend to think the latter, but I'm interested if anyone's seen anything about this process anywhere. I have scoured both their sites, and they're tight-lipped about the procedure. Anyone?
Click to expand...

What they mean by pre-activated is that the phone's IMEI and sim card's serial is already registered to the upgraded line on AT&T's side. This is why it's so quick to activate via iTunes. Once activated, your previous sim card will be deactivated right away!

This is also a pain if you're doing a upgrade swap. If someone was doing a upgrade swap, they will have to call AT&T BEFORE they activate via iTunes. Reason because you have to get AT&T to change over the phone's IMEI and sim card to whatever line you want.
 
It will be the same as last year... take it out of the box and plug into iTunes. Done.
 
truciet said:
This is also a pain if you're doing a upgrade swap. If someone was doing a upgrade swap, they will have to call AT&T BEFORE they activate via iTunes. Reason because you have to get AT&T to change over the phone's IMEI and sim card to whatever line you want.
Click to expand...

I had a feeling about this but are you sure that when I activate via itunes I can't just set my phone number in there and call it a day? Even though the SIM comes based on the other lines upgrade, when Itunes ask for my phone number why would it deactivate the other number if I don't enter that number?

Just to make sure I understand, what you're saying is call AT&T and they will switch that IMEI and then I can activate via my Itunes account?
 
Ferris23 said:
I had a feeling about this but are you sure that when I activate via itunes I can't just set my phone number in there and call it a day? Even though the SIM comes based on the other lines upgrade, when Itunes ask for my phone number why would it deactivate the other number if I don't enter that number?

Just to make sure I understand, what you're saying is call AT&T and they will switch that IMEI and then I can activate via my Itunes account?
Click to expand...

Sorry to say but it doesn't work that way. When you get the phone and try to activate it entering a different number, iTunes will reject it. :(

Once you call AT&T and swap everything (IMEI and sim card serial) over, then you can enter your number to activate it and iTunes will accept it no problem.
 
Ok thanks. Not a big deal, just was curious if necessary. My main focus is just getting the phone, I can deal with a bit of a hassle switching and swapping after the fact.

I understood the phones have an IMEI number but wasn't aware the SIM cards have a serial number has well, makes sense.

Will I need to get the IMEI off the other phone or is that something that have in their systems?
 
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