Selling Verizon iPhone 4 and buying iPhone 5. What are the steps? Any caveats? Tips?

[sniffies]

Is it as easy as selling AT&T iPhone? What should I know? Do I just wipe it clean and I'm done? With AT&T iPhone, all one has to do is erase everything and take out the SIM card. How is Verizon iPhone handled when it comes to selling, say, on Craigslist?

Your help, tips, advices would be much much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[maflynn]

Same thing, just wiping it.

One difference in finishing the transaction is that your verizon account must be in good standing or closed without any balance due. If so the new owner will not be able to activate the phone.

 

[srxtr]

Can't speak for Verizon, but I sold my iPhone 3G (AT&T obviously) in the past, and the steps:

1) Backup iPhone via iTunes.
2) Restore iPhone back to factory default.
3) Jailbreak then unlock the iPhone.
4) Sell on eBay (or craigslist if that's what you prefer)
5) Rest is obvious.

 

[sniffies]

Thanks, guys.

One question though: how do I deactivate my iPhone (since there's no SIM card)?

 

[DollaTwentyFive]

Once you activate the new phone on your account, the old one is automatically deactivated.

If you are selling the old one before you get the new one, you must change the MEID/ESN on your account so that someone else can activate the iPhone 4 one their account.

One word of caution - if you do activate another phone on your account that is NOT a smartphone, you will lose your unlimited data, if you have it. So make sure that if you don't go from iPhone to iPhone, that whatever phone you put on your account in the meantime is a smartphone.

 

[sniffies]

Thanks a lot, everyone.

If there's anything else that hasn't been mentioned yet, please, do share.

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

Gazelle.com to sell it.

 

[sbddude]

Gazelle.com to sell it.

The prices they pay are awful. I would never use that site.

 

[The Californian]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

The biggest issue I see is that the iPhone 5 doesn't exist.

 

[myfirst512]

One word of caution - if you do activate another phone on your account that is NOT a smartphone, you will lose your unlimited data, if you have it. So make sure that if you don't go from iPhone to iPhone, that whatever phone you put on your account in the meantime is a smartphone.

Hmmm... Hypothetical question:

What if...
- You currently have an unlimited plan & your old IPhone dies...
- You want to hold out to upgrade with the new IP5...
- You borrow a friend's old dumbphone (with your sim card) to tread water until the new phone is launched...
- Once launched, you "officially" upgrade to the IP5...

Is your unlimited plan screwed?
(It doesn't seem right to me... but, hey, it's the phone co.)

Thoughts?

 

[MRiOS]

Hmmm... Hypothetical question:

What if...
- You currently have an unlimited plan & your old IPhone dies...
- You want to hold out to upgrade with the new IP5...
- You borrow a friend's old dumbphone (with your sim card) to tread water until the new phone is launched...
- Once launched, you "officially" upgrade to the IP5...

Is your unlimited plan screwed?
(It doesn't seem right to me... but, hey, it's the phone co.)

Thoughts?

On AT&T they would be able to see that you're not using a smart phone and do you the 'favor' of removing your data plan. (I believe this would happen, as I am a Verizon customer, I cannot say for sure that they would do this for sure)

On Verizon, first off, there are no SIM cards, so you would have to activate a new phone with Verizon specifically (whether it's an upgrade or just a borrowed phone) and if you try to activate a non-smartphone after having a smartphone, it automatically removes your Data plan, screwing you out of the unlimited plan. Your best option, on Verizon anyway, is to spend a little extra $$ on say a cheap Palm Pixi Plus ($50 on Newegg) and keep it as a back up, just in case something happens and you need a smartphone device)