Swapping iPhones within a household account

[mantan]

Long story short, my wife is ATT upgrade.

She's always wanted a cell phone as basic as it gets, but is now thinking she might like an iphone, not sure.

If we bought her the new phone when it came out, would we be able to swap SIM cards and reactivate my number with her phone and her utilize my current one. Being new to the iPhone, she doesn't care about the new hardware features and knows mine is in mint condition.

I know you can utilize another iPhone with a sim, as my first one was inherited when my father passed. We just called ATT, popped in my old sim and it was reactivated.

But I didn't know if there were any hardware swapping rules within the same account. We'd still be under contract, so the money/subsidy part would seem the same to ATT.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Long story short, my wife is ATT upgrade.

She's always wanted a cell phone as basic as it gets, but is now thinking she might like an iphone, not sure.

If we bought her the new phone when it came out, would we be able to swap SIM cards and reactivate my number with her phone and her utilize my current one. Being new to the iPhone, she doesn't care about the new hardware features and knows mine is in mint condition.

I know you can utilize another iPhone with a sim, as my first one was inherited when my father passed. We just called ATT, popped in my old sim and it was reactivated.

But I didn't know if there were any hardware swapping rules within the same account. We'd still be under contract, so the money/subsidy part would seem the same to ATT.

Your post is a tad confusing.

You can swap sims on the same account between phones. No problems there. However, keep in mind that the phone number follows the sim. So if you put your sim in her phone, she will have your number. You can swap her sim into an iPhone and just let AT&T know and they will update it on their end so she has all the features. Using her sim, her phone will have her number. Make sense?

Number stays with the sim. You can swap hardware all day long.

 

[mantan]

Your post is a tad confusing.

You can swap sims on the same account between phones. No problems there. However, keep in mind that the phone number follows the sim. So if you put your sim in her phone, she will have your number. You can swap her sim into an iPhone and just let AT&T know and they will update it on their end so she has all the features. Using her sim, her phone will have her number. Make sense?

Number stays with the sim. You can swap hardware all day long.

Got it!

I imagine the anticipated microsim might cause an issue as well. If I want to use her new handset, I'd probably have to get another microsim and have ATT assign my current number to it. Then put a regular unassigned sim in my old phone and have ATT assign her current number to it. Correct?

 

[CSMchris376]

We don't really know if a new phone is going to have the microsim like the iPad does. To do a swap like you are talking about, the best thing is to go to the closest AT&T corporate store. I've done this before for my son and daughter because one was eligible and one wasn't and the two of them made a deal to use the other's eligibility. At the corporate store they can get into your account, make all the necessary changes, and do whatever SIM swaps you want. They just need to have the primary account holder and the two phones there.