Comments on: How-To: Give Your Old iPhone New Life With Prepaid Data and Minutes

By: Derek

Derek — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 02:22:56 +0000

Do you how to use iPhone as a prepaid phone for net 10?

By: Morgan

Morgan — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:25:53 +0000

I have a iPhone 3gs. and i tried this and it isnt working? the replace screen don’t pop up and i am following the instructions… help please

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:42:05 +0000

This works for the iPhone 4 as well. You’ll have to trim the SIM card though. And make sure that you have a data plan before you use the custom APN or your account will be charged .01/kb.

Also, can I get unlimited data? Or at least more data than 200MB? I use that in like a week.

By: JIm

JIm — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:34:00 +0000

Tmobile offers a daily web pass for prepaid phone users. It’s $1.49.

By: Don

Don — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:45:04 +0000

I purchased a GoPhone at Walmart and got it set up only to have it not work in the 3G. I finally figured the Go phone card had gone bad. Took it all back – it was not easy to get my money back but I did.

I purchased a second $19.99 GoPhone at Target recently. I only want to use it for phone calls in my 3G not Data. Before I did anything I read on the GoPhone package: “Once the device and SIM are activated, SIM cannot be used with any other device for a period of time. See quick start guide for additional information.” – What does this mean? How long is a period of time? I have read above some folks say 3 months.

Does anyone no what this “Period of time is all about?” It just seems to me that if I activate the GO Phone and in less that a day put the Sim card in my Iphone 3G that it will not work.

Has anyone bought a Go Phone card recently, activated it on the Go Phone, and then transferred the SIM card to the Iphone with success?

Or do I activate the card in the Iphone first and not in the Gophone?

It is a little confusing in the article above where it says “Although AT&T doesn’t officially support pay-as-you-go plans like GoPhone for the iPhone, you can buy a GoPhone, and simply take the SIM from the GoPhone (which is usually a cheap ‘dumb’ phone) and put it in your old iPhone”.

Note it really does not say which phone you activate the card in.

By: Nik

Nik — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:13:33 +0000

Be careful – set up my prepaid phone with this & AT&T sucked down my $70. balance in a matter of a few hours. I’ve been had!

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 01:47:20 +0000

As of December 9th, 2010, this still works. I just tried it with my iPhone 3G and surfed flawlessly on AT&T at 3G speeds with a newly purchased GoPhone SIM card.

Now I can take the superfluous Samsung prepaid phone (net cost $5) and donate it to charity so I can make someone else’s day this holiday season.

By: iGoPhone

iGoPhone — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:27:18 +0000

I found an iPhone 3G 16GB at work one day. After waiting a week for the owner to claim it, it was never claimed. I had been using GoPhone for a few years so when I got the iPhone I put my gophone SIM in and it worked fine. Later on I updated the iPhone to OS 4 and it killed the wifi like it did to many 3Gs. I sold the iPhone and bought another 3G and the SIM worked perfectly in that iPhone also.
I don’t think you are going to use the iPhone with the gophone prepaid for data. It is too expensive.
The article is about giving your old iPhone new life and the gophone does just that. GoPhone is now actually a decent prepaid service. Instead of $1/day + .10c/min it is now $2/day unlimited talk/text which is very good for At&t.

I wish there were a prepaid plan where you could use the old iPhone unlocked of course. Something like Boost where it is ~$50 unlimited talk/text/data. Boost uses iDen so its a no go, but does T-Mobile have an unlimited prepaid plan that you could use unlocked iPhones on?

BTW, one of the users stated earlier about using a gophone sim and it said “no service”. I occasionally get that, but I have jailbroken/unlocked mine. If you iPhone is unlocked sometimes it will not connect to the At&t network and you have to reboot the phone. Then it works fine.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:40:24 +0000

Work like a charm for me — SO HAPPY — THANK YOU :)

By: T

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:42:10 +0000

Works perfect, though connection speed is a tad slow, on my old iPhone 2G, 3.1.3, unlocked, jbken.
Was able to log into Skype. Got a warning about “using edge/3g that would decrease my credit” and suggestion to “switch to wifi or suscribe to a data plan”.
Thanks for this How-To, it’s great!

By: PAFM

PAFM — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:19:27 +0000

It worked for me, not sure why since I did what many others did – bought a gophone, activated the sim in the gophone, then transferred the sim into the iphone (3G). Only problem? I tested one webpage to see if the data worked – then I got a text message saying that I had used up $15 and had $0 in my account! One webpage!

By: tom

tom — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:07:45 +0000

this dose not seem to be working

By: Spam

Spam — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:00:28 +0000

Not having much luck either. Like everyone else, I got stuck with the “Connect to iTunes” issue with my 2G. So I decided to go the jailbreak/unlock approach – so went with Spirit & redsn0w. So no “Connect to iTunes” issues now and I’m able to still sync with iTunes. But after making the suggested APN changes, I’m still not getting any service – SIM works fine if I put it back in my GoPhone (I got a GoPhone with $15 credit). Any help would be appreciated.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:32:14 +0000

This is a bunch of bull…

By: Sharmainelightbody

Sharmainelightbody — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:36:26 +0000

Why does it say cannot install??? Please help

By: Adam McNutt

Adam McNutt — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:59:03 +0000

I’m heading out for the evening, but will post and answer some questions when I get back tonight. I’ll answer the long one later, but do want to address the short one now.

You don’t need an active SIM to run the iTunes activation. Hence the article about giving life to your OLD iPhone. Use the old inactive SIM and it’ll pass through iTunes. That’s what I did. I have also used my prepay GoPhone SIM and it’s worked for me as well. I think it just needs a SIM to get through.