Used T-Mobile Phones

My girlfriend's birthday is coming up in September, and right now she is using a less than stellar Blackberry Curve on T-Mobile. I was going to get her a 'new' phone around $100 (she's a little rough on phones ha),but I'm a Verizon guy, so I'm not sure what phones I should be looking at.

I read something about T-Mobile being on GSM but other networks are on CDMA, so there may be issues (?). What's the activation like with T-Mobile?

I was considering getting a broken iPhone 4 and fixing it, but I'm open to suggestions. I do prefer it be Android or iOS (preferably Android). If it's broken, and there are affordable parts to fix it, then that's totally fine with me.

Thank you for any help.

Kinda depends on your plan. I can only speak for sure to the prepaid side, but I think you can use the same phones if you go for a "traditional" monthly flat rate plan.

I started using T-Mobile prepaid over a year ago. My first phone was a Nokia 6085h. It was originally a subsidized phone sold by AT&T, so while it was a GSM phone, I had to have the previous owner get AT&T to unlock it, which they did. I was then able to purchase a T-Mobile SIM and have it activated for T-Mobile service.

Later I got a Nokia E5-00. It was already unlocked, but all I had to do was put the existing T-Mobile SIM in it, call T-Mobile and give them a couple bits of info (phone's EIN and/or IMEI as I recall) and I was up and running with the new-to-me phone.

Last year, my girlfriend bought a random-ass "sorta-smart" phone, a Blu Q53 (horrid phone, by the way), and was able to do exactly what I did to get on T-Mobile prepaid service.

It really does seem to be as simple as buying an unlocked GSM phone (or getting another carrier's phone unlocked), buying a T-Mobile SIM (whether you want to go prepaid or traditional), talking to T-Mobile on (another phone, obviously) to get it activated, and that's it.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the info. I do believe she has the prepaid plan. I don't suppose the sim card in the Blackberry would work with an Android phone? I know when I tried out an iPhone 4S the sim card from my previous Motorola Droid 3 was a different size. Thankfully with CDMA/3G you don't even need a sim card.

There are a few standard SIM sizes and I don't know which the Blackberry uses. But if it's the proper size, she should be able to use her existing T-Mobile SIM in a new phone. If not, the charge for a new SIM is not much.

You can also cut the sim card yourself, or use an adapter (the other way around)...

You can probably find an HTC Sensation for pretty close to $100.

Pylon said:

You can probably find an HTC Sensation for pretty close to $100.

Click to expand...

This. This right there. GREAT bang for your buck phone.