What does activation entail when buying a phone online? How does one activate ones new phone through this process? Is it done at the time of order or is it as simple as me inserting the sim card when I receive the phone?
Indeed as simple as taking the sim out of your current phone and putting in the new phone. If the new phone takes a different size sim, there is one provided in the box that you can activate in your self serve account.
Is there a time gap/delay between service? I know when I order in the shop everything is done seamlessly so that when I walk out of the shop I can use my new phone immediately.
No delay since you are using the same sim card that is already active.
In addition to buying a new phone I also want to change my plan from my current to another with a visual VM add on. I'm assuming that the current plan is associated with my current sim card so I'm guessing that means that I'll be sent a new sim card with the new phone?
Any changes to your plan/add-ons will happen on your current sim. Again, if a new sim is needed you can do a sim swap with the extra one they provide you.
BTW, what happens to all my data when the new phone is activated? (text conversations, notes, voice memos, photos, files, reminders, voice messages, apps, etc etc etc) How is that transferred to my new phone?
There are a suite of apps out there to help transfer data. You can find a few of the common methods here:
Thank you Alan, that was VERY helpful. Couple of clarifications though if you don’t mind regarding the following question and your answer:
BTW, what happens to all my data when the new phone is activated? (text conversations, notes, voice memos, photos, files, reminders, voice messages, apps, etc etc etc) How is that transferred to my new phone?
There are a suite of apps out there to help transfer data. You can find a few of the common methods here: .
I actually thought all that stuff was on the sim card no? So that once you switch/transfer your old sim into the new phone all that stuff (text conversations, notes, voice memos, photos, files, reminders, voice messages, apps, etc etc etc) is transferred ?
Sim cards are your connection to the network, SD cards store data.
If you have an older phone you may have some contacts on the sim card but that would be it.
If you have an SD card that’ll transfer over anything thats on there but chances are if you do have one, it’s not gonna have all the information on it so you will want to do a transfer with one of those apps in that article for the rest of your data.
Oh one last thing if you don’t mind. Where does the sim card stand in this data transfer process? I mean when I get the new phone I’ll be putting the SIM from the old phone into the new so does that affect the data transfer process since the source of the data (the old phone) does NOT now have a sim?
SIM card actually hold very little data. Typically 256KB. I doubt it’s gotten much higher. They really only contain contacts and text messages you selected to save. They can hold other data, but in terms of info you would transfer from phone to phone, that’s it.
It does not affect data transfer between phones at all. If it’s an android, I’d save contacts to gmail storage, so you don’t have to worry about if your sim card dies or is lost or stolen, and you have no numbers anymore.
It does not affect data transfer between phones at all. If it’s an android, I’d save contacts to gmail storage, so you don’t have to worry about if your sim card dies or is lost or stolen, and you have no numbers anymore.
So just to clarify … what you’re saying is that the sim cards/ has/have nothing to do with the data transfer between the old and new phone, correct? In other words the data transfer can occur even if neither phone had a sim card installed?
