Using a "lost" iPhone on existing At&t account

[calvy]

So I recently lost my iPhone, or so I thought. I bought another one at full price and had my Att service switched over to the new phone. Well fast forward 2 months and the lost phone turns back up. I can't return the new one. The old one is still in decent shape. So I'm thinking about letting a friend use it temporarily because her 3G is falling apart and she needs something to hold her over till iPhone 5 comes out.

Can I just plug this old iPhone into iTunes and let it do the account setup on her account using my old sim and everything? Or am I going to have to go to Att for help with this?

 

[0007776]

Why can't she just put in her SIM? I would think that should work unless AT&T blocked the phone because you reported it lost.

 

[calvy]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. But the iPhone 4 is the only phone that I know of that uses one of these damn Micro SIM's, and thus the phone she's coming from doesn't have the proper SIM card. Plus, she needs to add the appropriate data plan.

So I was hoping I could just secure erase the phone, plug it into iTunes and let it run through the normal activation process. But wanted some confirmation this was the proper method. Anybody out there know?

 

[ani23]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. But the iPhone 4 is the only phone that I know of that uses one of these damn Micro SIM's, and thus the phone she's coming from doesn't have the proper SIM card. Plus, she needs to add the appropriate data plan.

So I was hoping I could just secure erase the phone, plug it into iTunes and let it run through the normal activation process. But wanted some confirmation this was the proper method. Anybody out there know?

Yup that'll work. do a clean restore and ask her to get a new microsim from ATT.

 

[treyjustice]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. But the iPhone 4 is the only phone that I know of that uses one of these damn Micro SIM's, and thus the phone she's coming from doesn't have the proper SIM card. Plus, she needs to add the appropriate data plan.

So I was hoping I could just secure erase the phone, plug it into iTunes and let it run through the normal activation process. But wanted some confirmation this was the proper method. Anybody out there know?

she just has to take the phone to AT&T and put her new microsim into it. you can just go to setting and hit erase all content and settings before you give it to her...

 

[MaxBurn]

How about cutting or using a sim cutter to turn her sim into a microsim?

Also if it was jailbroken don't use the erase all option, must be restored.

 

[calvy]

How about cutting or using a sim cutter to turn her sim into a microsim?

Also if it was jailbroken don't use the erase all option, must be restored.

What happens if I erase all a jb device?

 

[macingman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Just cut down your friends sim to microsim size and put it into the iPhone 4. The data plan would automatically update.

 

[duction]

restore it and get some poon lol

 

[milani]

Yup that'll work. do a clean restore and ask her to get a new microsim from ATT.

Just be sure to get the SIM before you do the restore. You can't restore/activate a device without a SIM card.

 

[calvy]

haha, thanks all for the info. I was hoping to avoid a trip to an AT&T store for a new SIM, so I may suggest cutting the existing one. If not, maybe I can finagle a free one out of AT&T.

 

[Weiser878]

"Plus, she needs to add the appropriate data plan"

If she has an iPhone 3G, her data plan will work fine. She's probably even grandfathered on unlimited.