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Will this work iphone 5 to 5s sim swap

A

applefangordo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 11, 2013
18
0
My wife's 4s is upgrade eligible currently and I have an iPhone 5. She doesn't care about having the latest gadget so can I upgrade her number with a 5S then when I get home, swap my 5 and her 5S sim cards so my number/data plan move to the 5s and her number/data plan move to the 5?

We are ATT on the same phone account.
 
He's upgrading his wife's 4S with the 5S and them putting his iphone 5 SIM card in the new 5S.

I did forget to mention, you need to activate the new phone to your wife's number first. Then do the sim swap.
 
CosmoPilot said:
I did forget to mention, you need to activate the new phone to your wife's number first. Then do the sim swap.
Click to expand...
Well there is the problem... ATT said I do NOT need to do that... because if you do that, then your wife's current phone becomes useless... ATT said take the upgrade from my wife's phone but activate it on my line this way it doesn't affect her line at all. It would be so much easier if upgrades were a la carte... Meaning if any line in your account (I have 3) is due an upgrade you can easily just use it for ANY other account even it it is not due... ATT made it seem like this is precisely how it is but I guess we won't know for sure until the 20th...
 
I have done this several times. I have always had to go to the ATT store to get both phones working properly. But it is allowed and not a problem.
 
I do this every year. My wife gets my old phone, and I get the new model. On years where her line is eligible for the upgrade, I do the following:

1. Activate the new phone at home to the wife's phone number.
2. Turn off her old phone, take out the SIM card and destroy it.
3. Return her old phone to factory settings.
4. On the newly activated phone, I turn it off and take out the SIM card (it's now tied to her number).
5. On my current phone, I perform an "Erase All Content & Settings"
6. Once my current phone reboots, I turn it off and take out the SIM card (tied to my number).
7. Swap SIM cards.
8. Power up both phones. They now have the correct number associated.
9. Restore each phone from a backup. In my household, we use iCloud.
20. Done!

I even did this last year by trimming my iPhone 4S SIM card to go in the iPhone 5. It worked like a champ except I couldn't get LTE to work. I discovered after the fact the SIM card in the older phones didn't support LTE. Simple fix, the next day went to AT&T and had them give me a micro SIM.
 
I was planning on adding my girl friend to my family plan and order the iPhone 5S. Then I was going to swap her iPhone 5S for my iPhone 5. Do I lose the upgrade date on iPhone 5?

Thanks, Scott.
 
I'm very glad to find this thread.

My dad lives in Wisconsin, he has a 4, is due for an upgrade but only uses the phone to text and call so he has no interest. I am able to use his upgrade.

I live in Florida. I have a 5, can sell it to nextworth.com for $451, the 5S (64GB) w/upgrade is going to be $399. Not a bad deal at all.

If I go into the Apple Store and purchase over the counter, they apparently HAVE to activate it on the spot.

If I buy online, I activate at home via iTunes. So the question I have is: if I swap the SIM card before I activate the phone initially, will that activate the phone 5S with the old 5's account, and then I toss the SIM that it shipped with? I don't want to activate the new phone and have my dad's current phone de-activate on him.

I know that if I was on my parent's account, I could just "cross-upgrade" or whatever it's called within the same "Family" account but I haven't lived at home in years.

I guess I am thinking I could just buy the phone using his account info, have it shipped to me, and then call AT&T to activate the phone, but I dunno how this will go over with them. Also I don't know if Apple will ship to MY address when the upgrading account's billing address is my father's. I seem to recall that you have to initially place the order and have it shipped to the billing address on the ATT account, but then you can go into the account and update the order with a new mailing address.

Does anyone have any thoughts or input on how to make this work?

Edit: Nevermind, AT&T rep online and I actually had a lovely chat and reassured me what I wanted to do is no problem, and I have a pdf of the chat should I need to prove it. Sounds like I just have to order from Apple, have it shipped to my house, and activate it to my number and not my father's. His service won't be effected and the upgrade price is what I pay. "Cross upgrade" accomplished...

Now I just have to see it to believe it.
 
Last edited:
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