Buying an unlocked smart phone

[92 white 0650]

Has anyone bought an unlocked smart phone on E-bay or some other internet (non-phone co.) seller and used it with their exisiting account? It should be easy, logical and legal to do since you own the instrument, but there seems to be a few stories about complications with the phone company.

Here's the underlying question. My wife doesn't talk on the cell much at all; she's at her desk or at home or somewhere she doesn't want to be connected. She doesn't want a new phone plan; she wants to simply combine her PDA with the phone. If I walk into a phone store and tell them that story, they look at me like I'm the Geico cave man and tell me I can buy an unlocked phone from them for $450-$500. Hmm, not hardly an enticing deal. So, how about one of the discontinued Treo 650's being dumped on E-bay super cheap? Has anyone bought one or something similar just to get the new hardware, simply plugged in their exisitng SIM card and not told their phone company?

BTW, we are with Cingular and have such an incredibly old and cheap plan, we don't want to change it.

 

[Hugh]

If the phone is unlocked it will work with your existing SIM card. However some of the phones features might not work since the phone wasn't spec'ed to Cingular's requirements by the OEM. However a quick search through the Cingular customer forums shuold be able to help you out as well as the many phone/smartphone/PDA forums out there.

I have a pre-Cingular, AT&T Wireless charter GSM plan which is $99/month and everything is completely unlimited. Whenever I feel like a new phone I just buy an unlocked one on eBay or if it's not unlocked, I download the software and do it myself. Google is definitely your friend on this one.

 

[92 white 0650]

Thanks Hugh, that's good to know. I did go back to Cingular and the guy I got this time looked at my SIM card and said, "yeah, you can do that E-bay thing, no problem. We're a corporate store, blah blah blah...." (something about not being in the hardware business so they don't care or need to make deals on just the instruments.)

But sitting here in my cave, I think I'll keep my phone, PDA, camera, MP3 player, ECU, GPS, altimeter, pacemaker, coffemaker and tooth brush all separate. :biggrin:

 

[KooLaid]

It should work. When the phone works making calls in and out, you need to get the multimedia messaging and other little things set up. To do that, you have to have "OLA"(?), in otherwords, the online account access. Then going through some of the help functions, you'l find what you need and just a simple click here and click there. Clinking those links will cause Cingular to auto program those extra options into the phone, like recieving an auto install config file. Cingular is shitty because they limit a GREAT phone's abilities horribly, like limiting memory by 1/2, etc, etc. So these unlocked/unbranded phones are awesome.

Awesome source of information and answer ALL your questions is by simply doing a search in the Cingular Forum.

 

[KooLaid]

Oh and the cingular folks don't know TOO much generally because they're trained off a script and work off a script that follows what cingular programed into THEIR cingular phones. So they're gonna be really.... duh.

 

[jond]

Can you do with with all phone cariers(sprint, verizon, etc), or is cingular the one ones with sim cards?

 

[SoCalDude]

Can you do with with all phone cariers(sprint, verizon, etc), or is cingular the one ones with sim cards?

No sim cards for Verizon so you need to call them to transfer the service from one phone to another. Not a problem though.

 

[scorp965]

try: http://www.myworldphone.com

I have purchased my last three phones through them.

 

[92 white 0650]

Oh and the cingular folks don't know TOO much generally

Agreed. AKA the ubiquitous "service reps". I call them "burger flippers" because that's apparently what they were doing last week.

 

[spyderplayer2002]

Since when were 650s being dumped for super cheap?

 

[Hugh]

Can you do with with all phone cariers(sprint, verizon, etc), or is cingular the one ones with sim cards?

Here is a list of US carriers using GSM (requiring a SIM card).
For some odd reason this link will not work in FireFox so use IE.

 

[92 white 0650]

Since when were 650s being dumped for super cheap?

Ah, good question, I always like it when someone else wants the details as well as me. Currently there are 164 listings just for Cingular unlocked 650's, never mind all the other variations, so IMHO, that constitutes dumping.

As for super cheap, maybe I overstated that. After watching the bids for awhile, I see that the demand is high and that all the bids are getting pretty close to the Buy It Now price of $250+/-. So, maybe that's not super cheap, but compared to the list price of $450+, it's cheap-r.

As for "since when", probably whenever the 680 came out.

 

[Ski_Banker]

One of those suckers on Ebay is mine. Left my Treo 650 in a cab last Sat night.

Anyway, mixed blessing because I absolutely hated the phone as a phone and the PDA as a PDA. Worst of both worlds. Replaced it with the BB Pearl which is MUCH better as a phone and not too much worse as a PDA. Anyway, I wouldn't get a TREO if you will be doing a lot of travel or long emails...stick with a basic Blackberry.

 

[NsXMas]

Check Craigslist. A lot of people sell them there.

 

[robr]

Since the 650 isn't a GSM phone (thus no SIM), it's sort of irrelevant what they're selling for. Take a look at unlocked HP 6515s, those have dropped in price since the release of the 69xx series and are great PDAs. Built in GPS too (I still use the 6515 as my primary CIngular phone/PDA/GPS).

 

[Hugh]

Since the 650 isn't a GSM phone (thus no SIM), it's sort of irrelevant what they're selling for.

Incorrect, it's made in a GSM version. And quad band to boot.

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=638

 

[robr]

my mistake then, i was only familiar with the cdma version.