I used a Motorola KRZR K1M with US Cellular for about 4-5 years prior to buying an Eris. I know am 99% sure I'll be returning it in hopes to buy the Incredible/Passion/whatever. In the meantime, I need to use a cheap phone via cheap plan/prepay until that phone is released (hopefully a month or less). Does anyone know if I could activate this old Moto flip phone with VZW? Thanks!
Is it compatible? Sure, a few things though...
1. The system will accept the ESN likely, as it has many times for me when submitting US Cellular ESNs, however, it is very very likely the OTA will not work.
2. It could be manually programed, the ol' fashioned way, and that may work, but you could still very well end up w/ problems, I have seen this w/ my own eyes countless times...
Cust gets the handset programmed, uses it, then bursts a blood vessel in their head when they see bizarre roaming charges in their normally non roaming area. Why? I dunno, but it happens, it is almost as if the handset still prefers the other companies towers to VZW despite having the SID manually put in for you area.
3. It may be possible to flash the appropriate VZW software to the device, but then again it may not, and or you may not find anyone willing to try it for fear of bricking the phone. Not that it is that hard, but no one wants to take a phone some Joe Blow hands him, that looks like it has already been used for a year, has been through god knows what, and then try to flash it. Who's responsible if it goes wrong? (Hence why you may not be able to easily find someone at VZW that would do this.)
4. Just because US Cellular is a cdma carrier, that does not mean that their equipment is "compatible" on VZW network, today I literally had a guy come in, ask me to do an ESN change for him to a US cellular phone, and guess what, when I went to program it (OTA), "Welcome to US Cellular", not so handy. Could I have manually programmed it, yeah, was this guy the kind of guy that would have came back to the store 2 months later spitting mad that he got charged roaming here, here, and here.....
yeah.
I just put his old phone back on for him and told him sorry bout your luck, that ain't gonna work.
So yeah, you could do it, maybe if you talk to the right people, but I would not say that it's something that you should do, just find a VZW handset, hell, they won't even let former Alltel customers put Alltel handsets on a VZW Rate plan, there is a reason.
Buck up and get a VZW phone.