Cellphone - SIM Question

[Tuco]

Wife has a Motorola flip phone - Circa 2008.   Six months left on an ATT contract.
It was dropped and run over, and the earpiece has stopped working.
Everything else is fine.  Speaker phone, ringer, camera, keypad all still work.
No insurance.

A guy at work offered a similar Motarola flip phone as a replacement.
Circa 2006+/-, off an expired Altel contract.

QUESTION:

Can I do a SIM card swap and run the replacement on the old contract, or is it more involved than that? 
I understand we'll need to save all contacts and pictures to the SIM.

I do not want to go to the ATT store to deal with this.
Every time I've been there, I lose 2 hours of my life.

Thank you.

[Brad Johnson]

If your phone uses a SIM card you should be able to swap with no problem.  Chances are the contacts and such are already on the card. Most SIM based phones I've messed with defaulted to saving contacts to the card.

Brad

[dogmush]

You should be able to.  When I was overseas I swaped between Kuwati, Army and US sim cards depending on the type of call I wanted to make.  Swapped plans with no problem.

[Tuco]

Thanks.

The phone won't get in my hands before Monday. 
I'll let you all know how it goes.

Steve

[Sergeant Bob]

You're probably out of luck, as Alltel phones do not have SIM cards. They are CDMA phones which (in the US) do not have SIM cards.

[Brad Johnson]

You're probably out of luck, as Alltel phones do not have SIM cards. They are CDMA phones which (in the US) do not have SIM cards.

Missed that part.  Yep, AllTel does not use SIM cards.  If it's an AllTel phone, even one that looks like the same model, it ain't gonna work.

Brad

[CNYCacher]

AT&T's "prepaid" phones (I think they are called "Go Phones" can be purchased NEW for as little as $10 up to $99 depending on the features you want, and you can put a monthly service SIM into it and it will work fine.

The prepaid SIM cards are sold separately from the phones.

This was admitted to me (reluctantly) by two separate AT&T associates in two separate AT&T stores.  One of which even blatantly stated "We aren't supposed to offer that information, but you are correct, that will work."

The context of the conversation was I was looking for a phone with bluetooth and didn't want to re-new a contract.

I did not test this theory since the only Go Phone at the time which offered bluetooth was $99 and i wasn't going to spend that much when I had a phone that worked.

[taurusowner]

Is there any particular reason some carriers, like Verizon, design their phone without SIM cards?  I've been thinking about switching from T-Mobile to Verizon, but the fact they don't use SIM is giving me a moment of pause.  I have a crappy but rugged Motorola phone that just texts and makes calls that I use at work and whenever I am off doing Army training.  This way if it breaks or gets damaged, I'm only out $10 instead of $300.  I just move the SIM and I'm good to go.  I won't be able to do this with Verizon.  Why do they keep themselves from having such a useful feature?  Why not make phones that use the R-UIM as it is compatible with CDMA?  Do they just like being able to control what phone you are using?

[tyme]

Verizon, Sprint, etc use CDMA.  It's a quasi-proprietary protocol by Qualcomm, and CDMA phones don't use SIM cards.

GSM phones use SIM cards.  (AT&T and T-Mobile, mainly, in the U.S.)

Carriers don't design phones.  They customize and subsidize phones designed by cell phone companies like Nokia and Motorola (and Apple, tee-hee).  Most cell phone manufacturers make all sorts of phones, both CDMA and GSM, and arrange to sell them through the appropriate carriers.

[taurusowner]

The Removable User Identity Module is essentially a SIM card that works on the CDMA standard.  There is even a Verizon one that is used in Europe
 

As it stands right now, CDMA phones in Europe and Asia are offered with R-UIM slots.  Only North American companies refuse to adopt this technology.  Why?

[dogmush]

My Verizon Blackberry has a slot for one of those cards.

Of course they made it non removable, but it's there.


ETA: Actually I got it out it's just stiff.  So the Verizon storms do use that card.

Don't see one in my HTC though.

[myrockfight]

I second the "Go Phone" idea. However, if you happen to mention that you have a contract with AT&T already, they probably won't let you buy the phone. You can guess how I figured that one out.  

I have had the same problem and didn't want to pay $300 for the same Motorola RAZR that you could buy as a "Go Phone" for a 1/3 of the contract price. So I just told the guy at the next place that I was buying a new phone for my nephew who already has his own pre-paid SIM cards. The look on his face was exactly one of belief, but what could he say? "No?!" LOL