Does someone know of a way I can tell if my phone is used or refurbished? I just got a Vibrant through a T-Mobile store and it was sold to me as new but I feel it might not be...mainly because as the rep was setting it up before handing it over the home screen icons were all scattered about and when I opened doubleTwist player to check it out there already was a device name set in the Settings menu. I tend to be mistrustful of phone carriers in general so my paranoia may be ill-founded. This is my first smartphone and I am definitely a "noob" to androids. Thanks everyone.
Could possibly be some foul play. When did you get it?
Does it have scratches?
Is it possible to call T-Mobile and ask them if the phones imei has ever been used by another sim?
Either way, if you just got the phone, ask them to exchange it for you, and tell them not to open the box, you will open it yourself.
most likely you purchased a phone from a "authorized dealer" usually in cases like that when a person buys a phone they have xx days to return it. authorized retails (some not all) will resell that "gently used" device as new. I haven't heard this happening from T-Mobile Corporate stores. Check for wear backplates, battery and surrounding area, screen and connector pins for the micro usb plug. if everything looks up to par don't worry about it.
Yeah I was a pretty annoyed that the clerk was setting up the phone and I had to tell them I wanted to see what they were doing. The phone looks new and all the accessories were still in their respective 'bags'.
I did purchase the phone from a tmo corporate store. I also posted on doubleTwist's support forum and found out that a default name (a random Star Wars or Dune character name) is automatically set if you aren't logged into a gmail account during setup, which I didn't have. The other item of concern is the pin2 code to access the Fixed Dialing Number menu is already set and I didn't do it. Calling tmobile support tonight to find out what's up with that. I'll post here what I find out. Thanks.
So I called tmobile customer support to ask about the pin2 code but it was after hours. I did find out from the user manual that you DO have to get this code from your carrier if your sim card supports it. I also successfully registered (after several attempts) my phone with the IMEI code on the Samsung site. I think I've been a little paranoid about this and actually received a new phone like I should have. Doesn't hurt to be a little skeptical though, eh? Thanks again to SamsungVibrant and boystuff for your responses.
Related
I know there are a lot of threads and tutorials on how to do this, but my question is who is currently using a Sprint Touch pro with verizon and how are you doing it? I read that verizon blocked the way that everyone used to do it with *228 option 3, and I wanted to know if there was an alternate way of doing it before I go and buy one.
I am right now, got mine in while the loophole was still open. There is a way to have the esn added by calling cust service but it may take numerous calls to find someone who knows how to add the esn into the system. I am thinking of selling mine. I wonder if it has been on the account once if it will be able to be activated like normal since it was in the system once? I may toy with this and reactivate my vogue then try to reactivate my tp. Might be a plus for a selling point if i can...
No it wont reactivate, if you used the loophole and switch devices it will not reactivate.
Trust me I did this and had to do an ESN repair to get it working again.
I have been looking at the specs for the alltel TP and it seems that they are really similar to Sprints, and if it is known that a sprint TP will not work with verizon anymore i will just get the Alltel one. since verizon bought them it should be easier to add the Alltel one than the sprint one, they might not like it and try saying they can't but I am sure I can get them to do it. thanks for all your help.
RE: Alltel TP on VZW
No Dice on the Alltel Touch Pro on the VZW network! At least for me.
I think the sprint touch pro will work on vzw. The main thing is to setup the phone first and then some how get them to add the esn. That is what i had to do to get alltel to add my sprint touch pro.
you just need to quote the CSA to them that states that you can use any CDMA compatable phone here is the quote from their CSA "Your wireless phone is any device you use to receive our wireless voice or data service. It must comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations and be compatible with our network and your Plan. Whether you buy your wireless phone from us or someone else is entirely your choice. At times we may change your wireless phone's software, applications or programming remotely and without notice. This could affect data you've stored on, the way you've programmed or the way you use your wireless phone. If you purchased a wireless phone (other than a "global phone") from Verizon Wireless for use with a plan with a minimum term and want to reprogram your phone for use with another wireless carrier network, the default service programming code is set to "000000" or "123456." Verizon Wireless in no way guarantees that your Verizon Wireless phone will be capable of being reprogrammed for use with another wireless carrier network after the service programming code is entered, or that another wireless carrier will accept your device for use on its network" this is the post that I found. http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=75164&page=2
I work for verizon and they have this 'come one come all' but it only depends on the person you get as a CSR. There is a request form where you can fill out the phone make, model, and ESN and email/fax it into the people that actually do it for you. I've performed the request without fail. If I can remember to get the request form, I'll post it here as soon as I can.
if you know how to get the esn added, i would love to find out. i went round and round with verizon customer service, sales, tech support and store reps about trying to get a sprint mogul setup for my girlfriend. everyone kept telling me it couldnt be done or they dont do that. found the entry in their websites faq that states they do before anyone would listen to me. was finally told i had to send the phone to their development evaluation center before they could activate it, and that it would take three weeks! so if you have an easier way, please, enlighten me! ps..didnt mean to jack the thread
coppertop24 said:
if you know how to get the esn added, i would love to find out. i went round and round with verizon customer service, sales, tech support and store reps about trying to get a sprint mogul setup for my girlfriend. everyone kept telling me it couldnt be done or they dont do that. found the entry in their websites faq that states they do before anyone would listen to me. was finally told i had to send the phone to their development evaluation center before they could activate it, and that it would take three weeks! so if you have an easier way, please, enlighten me! ps..didnt mean to jack the thread
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
all they will do is change the settings to be compatible with their network, nothing that you can't do yourself. here is some info about how to do it yourself.
derynhaze said:
I work for verizon and they have this 'come one come all' but it only depends on the person you get as a CSR. There is a request form where you can fill out the phone make, model, and ESN and email/fax it into the people that actually do it for you. I've performed the request without fail. If I can remember to get the request form, I'll post it here as soon as I can.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
can someone add my esn or point me in right direction?
please i have had this phone for weeks and havent got any where
no
Take it to a TMO store, I doubt anyone here will be too willing to help giving the possibility that you may have a stolen device.
If it is rooted there is a way, I don't have the link, but you use adb to pull and edit one of the db's , if it is not rooted, then most likely SOL ...
colaicee said:
i work at a cellphone repair shop. we also buy sale and trade phones. i use XDA a lot for the new android phones coming out when people have problems.
my coworker bought a vibrant from a customer that came into our store, the thing is that now the phone is patterned locked and we dont know the original email address. he said that it was working fine when he first purchased it. my guess is the customer unlocked it before my coworker played around with the phone.
anyways, no i didnt steal it. or any of that bs. we have a business license, a store front, and 99.9% feedback on ebay.
pm me if theres a way. willing to paypal for info.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you really did buy it, then call the person up and ask them.... unless i'm mistaken if any store buys stuff from customers they're supposed to document all information in case the item has been stolen
The phone is locked regardless. There is an android bug that doesn't allow the phone to verify the google credentials after you try the pattern lock too many times. Even if if was the OP's actual phone, he'd need to either factory reset, flash a new rom to the device, or get a replacement phone.
No one here will be able to help you get past it. There were security holes that allowed people to bypass it, but Google has sinec patched those, without fixing the fundamental issue (users, their children, their friends locking them out and basically "bricking" the device for all intents and purposes).
You got got, and it's probably a stolen device (not saying you stole it, someone else could have).
If you go to T-Mobile they will ask for you account information and check the IMEI against you account. T-Mobile uses different bands as AT&T so there aren't that many people buying Vibrants up front to unlock them and use them on different carriers, TBQH. If that IMEI belongs to someone else (it's even on you contract/reciept), they won't replace the phone. They will assume it's stolen.
Maybe if you start a contract/new line the reps in the store may help you out, though.
However, contacting Samsung may yield better results, but I think the Warranty is handled by T-Mobile, unless it's a hardware defect (hardware locked devices and pattern lockouts are both software issues).
"No i didn't steal it"
LOL
:/........
Nvm, lol
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
If it is rooted you could always try this ..
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=485988
ookas said:
if you really did buy it, then call the person up and ask them.... unless i'm mistaken if any store buys stuff from customers they're supposed to document all information in case the item has been stolen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep, good call there. if the op purchased the phone he should have all of the sellers info on file.
Hey Guys,
So i bought a new unlocked S3 as a gift and left it in my car and went out for dinner and When i came back my car was broken into and obviously the phone was stolen along with other things in the vehicle. So i called the cops and filed a report but i was not able to give any info n the phone like a IMEI number. So i filed a claim with the store i bought this from and they are being a pain. So i had to call my bank and put a stop pay but there might be an issue. So i am curious to know if this phone can be tracked or not, btw there was never a sim in the phone. I have been looking everywhere searching for answers. Any info on this is helpful. I paid $700.00 for the phone and now its gone.
Thanks!
solomon862000 said:
Hey Guys,
So i bought a new unlocked S3 as a gift and left it in my car and went out for dinner and When i came back my car was broken into and obviously the phone was stolen along with other things in the vehicle. So i called the cops and filed a report but i was not able to give any info n the phone like a IMEI number. So i filed a claim with the store i bought this from and they are being a pain. So i had to call my bank and put a stop pay but there might be an issue. So i am curious to know if this phone can be tracked or not, btw there was never a sim in the phone. I have been looking everywhere searching for answers. Any info on this is helpful. I paid $700.00 for the phone and now its gone.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey there,
I'm sorry for your misfortune, but you shouldn't have left such a pricey object in your car I suppose..
You don't know its IMEI so you should contact the person to get ahold of the store he bought it from to maybe check with the store about getting the device's IMEI number in order for you to track it..
Other than that, I'm not sure there's something else you can do..
check out Lookout Plan B
Was the phone still in the box?
yes there is.
1. is your phone rooted? if yes this will make this easier, if not its okay, there's still a lot we can do.
2. even without a simcard inside the phone, did you ever set up a Google account? hopefully you still remember your info, but if you don't, and aren't able to recover it thru Google's site, PM me.
3. go to market.android.com (it'll redirect you to whatever they changed their new URL to when they renamed it play store).
4. luckily android can remotely install apps to your phone even without you having the phone (scary isn't it? lol). you're going to want to install an app called androidlost .
5. from there, visit androidlost.com and even without you having the phone, you can setup and configure the app (also scary right? lol).
6. now this is where root comes in, if you're rooted, you can do all sorts of evil things, like listen in on that dude thru your phones mic, watch him thru your cam, dial numbers from the phone, track it thru GPS, take any content out of it, delete anything inside the phone, check call logs, location history, and when you actually find the guy, you can set off a siren to max out your phones volume, and never stop blasting till you take confront that SOB face to face. of course how much of this actually depends on if you're rooted or not, like remotely formatting the SD and such, the others, no root necessary! (now is it scary? lol)
also if you plan on having more of your phones stolen in the future, you should do all this before having your carrier shut down your phone lol. (you'll have to rely on wifi for now)
also, did you buy it with a Visa? if you did, and you live in the US, even if you bought it from outside the US, your store warranty is doubled, and if that didn't fix it, they'll completely replace it up to $500 per item, up to $50,000 per year (as long as said item wasn't stolen from your car ) (
Sorry if this is in the wrong place, first time poster here.
In December I purchased a nexus5 off of some guy that was selling one in my local area. He seemed like a good guy, the phone was in the original box and I was pumped at getting one for a bit cheaper than they are on the play store. Although this last week it randomly could not connect to the network, so I called Telus (my Canadian provider) and after a half hour of troubleshooting they told me that the IMEI is blacklisted as a lost or stolen device? I feel pretty ripped off and disappointed. I found the guys email that I brought it from and tried to contact him but he wont answer his phone, texts, or email. So I don't know what to do? Am I just screwed and forced to buy a new phone? is there anyway I can change the IMIE address? Or anything that anyone can recommend I should attempt to do? Thanks in advance for any help that can be supplied!
Always check before buying. If it is stolen (instead of lost) then you should turn it in to the police. But there is no way to tell and the provider will never tell you which.
It also isn't unheard of for a telco to incorrectly block a phone. I'd try arguing your case since you used it for a month before they shut you down.
nordlead2005 said:
Always check before buying. If it is stolen (instead of lost) then you should turn it in to the police. But there is no way to tell and the provider will never tell you which.
It also isn't unheard of for a telco to incorrectly block a phone. I'd try arguing your case since you used it for a month before they shut you down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the input. Who would I contact about arguing it? I talked to someone at Telus for a good half an hour, and they just told me that they have no control blacklisting the IMEI. They would if say i was under contract and I didnt pay my bill. But I am off contract and just put their SIM in my unlocked device. The person told me that say for example if the phone was stolen from BestBuy in novemeber, it could have worked this entire time because it took bestbuy this long for them to put the numbers in there system, and it finally just caught up with me. And also, my SIM works in my friends nexus4, so it doesnt have anything to do with Telus, its an issue with the phone not getting access to the towers. And if it is blacklisted on the national list for being lost or stolen it wont work on any of the carriers in the country... So i dont know what to do
My wife bought me the international version of the Samsung Gear S (SM-R750W). She said that she researched and from her understanding it should work on the T mobile network. From what I've found though the consensus seemed to be it would not work, or if it did it would be spotty at best depending on the specific towers/area you were in because Tmobile utilizes different network types in different areas.
I decide to give it a shot anyway and went to the T-Mobile store where I signed up for the wearable plan and got a new nano sim card. I was crossing my fingers but as soon as they put the sim card in the watch it came to life. It looked to be working fine but as I left the store I received a text from T-Mobile stating " the SIM for your wearable devices is in an ineligible device. Services to the SIM are locked until it returned to your eligible wearable device".
I pessimistically started thinking well great, there goes that idea. But as I got into my vehicle I shut my phone down and tried to see if the watch can work on its own as a phone when unencumbered from my Note 4 bluetooth/WiFi data connections. It worked perfectly-I started calling my friends and they couldn't believe I was talking on a watch phone. Several I actually felt the call sound quality was better on the watch speaker phone compared to normally speaking on the Note 4. I called customer service but they told me they couldn't see anything and if it was working fine not to worry about it.
For the next eight or 9 hours it worked perfectly and I was using it a lot. I drove around large swaths of town and neither data nor call experienced even the slightest issue - for once I was happy to be wrong.
Eventually, as I am oft to do, I fell asleep. When I awoke this morning the watch was no longer connected to the network. It gave me a message saying it was unable to connect and did I want to scan for additional networks. I selected yes and it was able to find the T-Mobile and ATT networks. T-Mobile was selected and a "registering" notification was displayed. It took awhile but eventually said it was unable to register with the network.
I call T-Mobile and they said pretty much exactly what I expected them to say -that because it was not a T mobile device they could not ensure proper operation. But he said (and he characterized this as "good news", "light at the end of a tunnel" and "viable solution” Seriously said all 3 things.) I could either forget all about the cellular connection and just use this as a companion device OR go and buy a new Gear S from T Mobile if I really wanted that feature.
I’m truly and utterly baffled that he believed his suggestions merited the positive sayings from above. Never in my lifetime has my head been closer to exploding.
After I was finally able to speak again, I explained that it seemed unlikely to be an issue with the watch. If my Gear S was working perfectly yesterday and can still detect Tmobile & ATT networks, then something on your end seems to be preventing registration. He agree to file a ticket with the engineering team and tomorrow I should hear from them hopefully. He also told me to go and try another nano-SIM, gratis, at the Tmobile store. So today I went and as soon as I put the new card in all systems were go. I assumed that I somehow had received a bad card because here again now, data and voice are connected.
This time I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot before it notified me that that it was again unable to register with the network. There is conflicting information regarding the radio frequencies and bands that the different Gear S models have and I didn’t have high hopes. But then it actually did work, WELL, so any ideas as to what is going wrong?
Imei not recognized as a wearable device by tmo
I am also getting very discouraged with the gear s on tmo.
But I think I finally got a tech person who may have found the problem ,
He said my gear s is no longer registering because the tmo system did not recognize the Imei as a wearable, that's why when I swapped sim with a friends iPhone sim, the gear worked. Because the wearable plan will only work with that device. The rep is asking engineering to add my Imei as wearable, but it has happen yet, he did not know if they could....
perdikoylis said:
I am also getting very discouraged with the gear s on tmo.
But I think I finally got a tech person who may have found the problem ,
He said my gear s is no longer registering because the tmo system did not recognize the Imei as a wearable, that's why when I swapped sim with a friends iPhone sim, the gear worked. Because the wearable plan will only work with that device. The rep is asking engineering to add my Imei as wearable, but it has happen yet, he did not know if they could....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess that makes total sense, and answers my question if I could just get an Android watch phone at some point and use the same nano SIM that they gave me for my Gear S.
Could you post here if/when they added your IMEI? They were super unresponsive to my request to unlock my original Gear S (which I replaced with an ATT Gear S that ATT kindly unlocked for me), so I have little faith that Tmo are even willing to help their customers, but since I have my plan with them, I'd love to be wrong this time.
Tmo problem
Well I wish I had better news, but it is still not working, I called them back, they say they requested the engineering to add my IMEI , but who's knows if they did, they seem to have very little experience with gear s, it's very frustrating because it did work the first 2 months until I tried the sim in my iPhone. I think I have reached the end of the line ,
I might try closing acct and opening new again...
So can either buy new tmo gear s. And sell my unlocked att gear, or put mine on att,
But. I really liked the Tmo plan, and would probably had switched my other (family) lines to Tmo.
anyone have more ideas?
perdikoylis said:
Well I wish I had better news, but it is still not working, I called them back, they say they requested the engineering to add my IMEI , but who's knows if they did, they seem to have very little experience with gear s, it's very frustrating because it did work the first 2 months until I tried the sim in my iPhone. I think I have reached the end of the line ,
I might try closing acct and opening new again...
So can either buy new tmo gear s. And sell my unlocked att gear, or put mine on att,
But. I really liked the Tmo plan, and would probably had switched my other (family) lines to Tmo.
anyone have more ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try to cancel your wearbales plan, then get one again, with a new SIM and new number?
I would not buy a tmo gear S: they won't unlock it and it costs $50 more. I use an unlocked ATT Gear S on T-mo without issues, but if putting the SIM in another device caused this for you, and the SIM itself is not the problem, they must have some kind of hold/notice on your wearables plan in your account, I think?