• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Swapping my sim is it ok?

jo69

jo69

Android Enthusiast
Hi I have a Samsung a52s which I love.
But decided I would like to buy a bigger phone. Maybe a S22 plus or S23.
Then at the end of my contract I will just go pay as you sim, which will be much cheaper.
I know I will still have to pay my contract till it ends.

My questions are...
Will EE know I have put my sim in another phone not theirs?
Also can I sell my A52 even though am still under contract?
As will still be paying monthly to EE until contract ends?

Will my phone carrier know and notify me if I switch my SIM card to another phone?
 
SIMs were designed to be swapped, no problem there.

EE will know that you've swapped the SIM: when you connect to the network the phone sends its IMEI, and that tells them exactly what it is. But they don't care about that, and won't send you any messages to say that they've noticed. I've used my EE SIMs with non-EE handsets since before they were called EE. I've had SIMs fail and they just replace them. I change the handset and after a little while my EE account shows my new phone as my current handset, despite my having bought it elsewhere. They know, and they don't care.
 
Last edited:
As for the rest, if you sell the phone and keep paying then I doubt anyone will care, even if technically you are still paying it off. However if I were buying a phone I'd require that the contract was paid off fully before I bought it. The reason is that if you were to stop paying the contract after selling the phone the phone would be treated as stolen and blacklisted, so would stop working on any network. I would not buy a phone if there was a risk of that happening, and would not take a stranger's word that they'd keep on paying until the contract is complete because I've seen far too many people left with dead phones because the seller didn't do that.
 
Last edited:
Just to clarify, is your contract with EE just to use their cellular service? Or did you buy that Galaxy A52s from EE, which of course involved a contract with EE's cellular service?
With the former, it's not an issue as to which phone you put that SIM card into, but with the latter it's more complicated. If you bought your Galaxy A52s directly from EE (as opposed to buying a carrier-unlocked A52s from a different retailer), you'll still have financial obligations to paying off that phone. A situation where you'll have that one contract with EE and two phones. Unless you did buy it from EE by paying full price up front (as opposed to buying it spread out over the length of the contract time period). So many conditional aspects, that's the more complicated part.
 
Bought my A52 online. From Affordable Mobiles
When I next signed into EE it appeared there. Usually gone into EE shop.
So could I sell the A52 before the contract ends later in the year?
I know I will still be paying it until it ends
Just wanted a newer phone and the option to have a Pay As You Go Sim then, as it would be cheaper in the long run. Maybe my last phone lol
All this sounds complicated lol

I havent set a sim pin myself.
 
Did you buy your airtime contract together with the phone, or just the phone with no contract?

If the latter then there's no connection between the handset and your contract, so no need to worry about selling it whenever you want. If however you bought it through affordable mobiles but with an EE contract then it's no different from buying directly through EE, and affordable mobiles are just a reseller.
 
I've been SIM-only for more than 20 years now. There was a time when buying a phone on a contract made financial sense, but not for more than a decade - if you can afford the upfront cost of buying a phone outright it's cheaper to do so. Plus my current SIM-only contract pre-dates our actual departure from the EU and so still includes EU roaming, which a new one would not, so I have no interest in changing contracts again (at least until the UK shows some sense, which is still some years away).
 
Thanks for the advice Hadron.Will be a struggle to buy one outright. But sick of paying contract charges. Still got a few months to pay this one but then I am free lol.
Will wait and sell my old phone then
Always handy to have a back up.
Using smart switch is it best to do it with the sim still in the old phone?
 
I've only used Smart Switch once, but I'm pretty sure I put my SIM in the new phone first.
Each brand has its own transfer tool though (which is why I've only used Smart Switch once: the s21 is my first Samsung phone).
 
Hadron said:
I've been SIM-only for more than 20 years now. There was a time when buying a phone on a contract made financial sense, but not for more than a decade - if you can afford the upfront cost of buying a phone outright it's cheaper to do so.
Click to expand...
I bought my decent Samsung phone (£230 new) for £30 because the screen was cracked (I hardly notice). Buying a new phone is like buying a new car - totally nonsensical.
 
I bought a ton of used older phones and rely on SIM swapping. Nothing bad happens. Worse thing is you get the wrong type of phone and end up with no service or no data/only bars.

I'm using a prepaid SIM in an old Verizon Galaxy S4 Mini. The notification shade shows 'no service' and under settings-->About phone-->Status it shows network type "Unknown" but works otherwise. I can use MMS/SMS, phone and data if I had data. I only have MMS (don't need data)

The only time I saw a SIM PIN ws back in the old Cingular days. Like 2001, if you put a post-paid SIM into a Tracfone you'd get a prompt asking for a PUK code, which the carrier called 'hacking' and often threatened to cancel your service or got hostile just for asking for that PUK code, but that was a long time ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom