Selling my iPhone on Craigslist to fund a new phone. Can't find any real instructions on how to do this. Is it really as easy as turning off iMessage and all that stuff, then restoring it to factory settings? Or is it still tied to your iCloud account? Any help is appreciated!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Selling iPhone on Craigslist
- Thread starter dominic252
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I believe so. Just turn everything off, go to your mail etc and delete all accts, and restore to factory settings. Turn it on, and try to find any trace of yourself, and if you don't see anything, restore again, and leave off. That is what I would (will in a year or so) be doing. Try selling on ebay/amazon too. You are more likely to get more money there.
I would like to try selling on eBay, but I'm trying to sell my phone sooner rather than later and I don't have a backup phone. Essentially, I'm looking to jump ship and go to the Nexus 5, so the ideal situation would be to sell my phone and go pickup a Nexus 5 the same day
Then I would say craigslist would be your best bet. Price it low, and you'll probably get more responses.
For all phones.
They don't need and cant use your sim.
The buyer will need to get their own with their account info from their carrier.
Unless it's a Sprint phone. The SIM card is tied to the phone, so taking it out would be useless.
Yeah, you can sell whatever you want, but make sure to take out the sim card.... that is the thing that holds all your personal info etc.
Everyone is making this too complicated. To completely wipe your phone it takes three steps:
1. Turn off Find My iPhone. Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone(you can skip this step if find my iPhone is already off).
2. Wipe the contents of the phone. Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Contents and Settings
3. Remove your SIM card. It doesn't contain any personal information, but the buyer doesn't need it. I don't know about Sprint, so you may need to look into that if you have a Sprint phone.
Well put!
I began reading through this thread and noticed that no one mentioned the Find my iphone setting... No need to make the new owner frustrated when he/she inserts their sim only to realize the phone is locked to previous owners icloud.
Well put!
I began reading through this thread and noticed that no one mentioned the Find my iphone setting... No need to make the new owner frustrated when he/she inserts their sim only to realize the phone is locked to previous owners icloud.
I'm pretty sure Find my iPhone needs to be deactivated before you're able to erase all contents and settings anyway.
If were being specific: If still enabled it will simply prompt for your icloud password after choosing to "Erase All content and Settings". But keeping "Find my iphone" enabled during this process requires the same icloud password to be entered after erase is complete for the device to be activated (usable) once again.
Last edited:
Based on doing this personally on a couple of devices and a few discussions about this in the past, the normal flow is that you should be asked to disable Find My iPhone as one of the first things when you select erase all content and settings.
For Sprint and MetroPCS, it's tied to the device and needs to be included to get LTE. No customer information is stored on it. http://support.sprint.com/support/article/About_Removable_UICC_Cards/case-wds02012-20120920-100001 http://community.ebay.com/t5/Cell-Phones/BEWARE-TO-ALL-BUYERS-SELLERS-BUYING-SELLING-USED-METROPCS-4G/td-p/2734165
If OP is on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, or most other carriers, the SIM needs to be removed and put in his new phone. If he's on Verizon, he might need to go into a store and make sure it's activated properly.