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hurtin_albertan · 12-27-2012, 02:01 PM

Bought my gf a used iPhone 4 for Christmas, as her iPhone 3G has been rendered almost entirely useless.

She is under contract with Bell Mobility, and I sourced out a good deal on a phone that was locked to Virgin Mobile. From what I had found on the internet, compatability between the two carriers should not be an issue (i.e. her Bell SIM card would work in the Virgin phone), and that you could trim the old larger-sized 3G SIM card down to the size of the new generation nano SIM without issue. As far as I can tell her newly trimmed SIM card is undamaged and visually identical to a factory-made card.

However, when I turn the phone on, it says "No SIM Card - Insert a valid SIM card to activate". I called Virgin tech support and they said the Bell SIM card should work in the Virgin locked phone, but that I would need to purchase a nano SIM card and my trim job was the problem. That seemed reasonable enough, but when I insert my Telus factory-made nano sim card the same message appears - the phone doesn't register that a SIM card is present. So it seems that this is the error message that appears when the carrier-locked phone has an alternative service provider's SIM card inserted.

Does anybody have any experience with this issue or thoughts/suggestions on the matter? I'm suspicious that the phone needs to be unlocked or possibly there is a more complicated problem at hand.

12-27-2012, 02:01 PM	#1
hurtin_albertan Crash and Bang Winger Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Rockies, West of the rest Exp:	iPhone 4 Activation Problem Bought my gf a used iPhone 4 for Christmas, as her iPhone 3G has been rendered almost entirely useless. She is under contract with Bell Mobility, and I sourced out a good deal on a phone that was locked to Virgin Mobile. From what I had found on the internet, compatability between the two carriers should not be an issue (i.e. her Bell SIM card would work in the Virgin phone), and that you could trim the old larger-sized 3G SIM card down to the size of the new generation nano SIM without issue. As far as I can tell her newly trimmed SIM card is undamaged and visually identical to a factory-made card. However, when I turn the phone on, it says "No SIM Card - Insert a valid SIM card to activate". I called Virgin tech support and they said the Bell SIM card should work in the Virgin locked phone, but that I would need to purchase a nano SIM card and my trim job was the problem. That seemed reasonable enough, but when I insert my Telus factory-made nano sim card the same message appears - the phone doesn't register that a SIM card is present. So it seems that this is the error message that appears when the carrier-locked phone has an alternative service provider's SIM card inserted. Does anybody have any experience with this issue or thoughts/suggestions on the matter? I'm suspicious that the phone needs to be unlocked or possibly there is a more complicated problem at hand.