Newbie help please

[cmsmithatc]

SIAP but I was unsure if any other threads pertained to my exact issue.

I currently have a iPhone 4 that is on an account of my own. I am not eligible for an upgrade until April.

My mother and father, both 3GS, are eligible on their account. Mom is upgrading to 4S. Father does not care to upgrade to 4S, but will use upgrade to benefit me.

My question. After he activates the iPhone 4S, complete with new sim, can we just swap sim cards between my 4 and his 4S, despite being on different accounts?

If so, do we hook up to our iTunes accounts and restore from our respective backups (done before switching)?

Thanks in advance for advice/help.

 

[boshii]

You can. I would swap sims then restore.

 

[cmsmithatc]

You can. I would swap sims then restore.

Thank you.

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One more question please. Forgot to add.

My parents share an iTunes account. I do not, so I am not as familiar with the sharing. When he restores to his backup, will it allow him to select? Want to make sure he restores from his backup and not my mother's?

Thanks again.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Thank you.

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One more question please. Forgot to add.

My parents share an iTunes account. I do not, so I am not as familiar with the sharing. When he restores to his backup, will it allow him to select? Want to make sure he restores from his backup and not my mother's?

Thanks again.

Yes, you can select which backup you want to restore to.

 

[boshii]

If you mean select a backup, then yes.

 

[cmsmithatc]

Yes, you can select which backup you want to restore to.

If you mean select a backup, then yes.

Thanks to both of you.

 

[-Ozzy-]

IF your carrier is AT&T, then you can avoid the whole ordeal of swapping sims and syncing everything correctly, by just telling the AT&T rep that YOU are taking you father's upgrade, and they can do that for you. That way you'd active the 4S on your own number and there's no need to swap SIMs. Then when your time comes up, your father OR YOU again can take the upgrade. I do it aaaall the time

Again, this is IF you're an AT&T customer. I don't know about the others.

EDIT: I'm not the most sober individual right now, and made grammatical horrors. Sorry *hic*

 

[cmsmithatc]

IF your carrier is AT&T, then you can avoid the whole ordeal of swapping sims and syncing everything correctly, by just telling the AT&T rep that YOU are taking you father's upgrade, and they can do that for you. That way you'd active the 4S on your own number and there's no need to swap SIMs. Then when your time comes up, your father OR YOU again can take the upgrade. I do it aaaall the time

Again, this is IF you're an AT&T customer. I don't know about the others.

EDIT: I'm not the most sober individual right now, and made grammatical horrors. Sorry *hic*

Thanks.

That was the original plan. ATT gave my mother some garbage answer about it being different because we were not on the same account and because he had the 3GS and thus the old sim. Said it would be "complicated" and could not all be done on the same day.

Sounded to me like the guy was merely not wanting to deal with it.

 

[lelisa13p]

That was a lazy AT&T employee.

My son and I have been on a Family Plan for years and one of our 2-year contracts times out every other year, alternating years. In December 2009 I got a 3Gs because we had kept our same old phones (Nokia) for a couple of years after our contracts expired and my son didn't care about upgrading at that time. Last December (2010) we used his upgrade to get iPhone 4 for myself and passed my 1-year old 3Gs on to him. AT&T handled all of the swap in the store; I had already synced my data from the 3Gs to iTunes before we went in to do the deal. Now my account is eligible for the upgrade to iPhone 4s and we will likely make another swap (in the same way) in December when my son visits for the holidays. YAY!

If you go into the AT&T store, they will take care of it for you. The entire process in the store took about 30 minutes, including the purchase.