3G Sim in 4G Phone?

[kickaha]

Hi, all-

On Friday I upgraded from my iPhone 3GS to an HTC Inspire (WOOT!)

Nicole at CostCo told me it would take up to 24 hours for my HTC to start working. For 48 hours I've been staring at my HTC, waiting for this to happen, but it hasn't. The "bars" are grayed out and there is an X above them.

I called AT&T and was told I need to swap the SIM from my iPhone to my HTC. But, when I was shopping for my HTC I had two people (at AT&T stores) tell me that I would need a new SIM.

I removed the SIM from my iPhone and it is labelled 3G.

Will this SIM work in my 4G HTC Inspire? (It just seems like a 4G phone should not have a SIM with a 3G label.)

Also what is stored on the SIM? I've heard that I'll lose my contact information if I get a new SIM, but that's no big deal as I sync that from my PC.

Are voice mails and IMs stored on the SIM? I would like to transfer those, if possible.

Help me Obiwan-Androidforums, you're my only hope!

Sign me,

Confused inSane Diego

 

[eduran214]

not sure either i bought my inspire yesterday at bestbuy and the salesman asked me if i wanted a new sim card so I told him yes since i thought i needed a 4g sim...when i got home i looked at it and it was a 3g so im not sure

 

[dylando808]

well if your coming from an iphone you might have to change your SIM card anyway because i think iPhones use micro SIM cards which would be too small for the inspire.

also 3G SIM cards will work in the inspire. you just need to make sure the data plan that you have is set to the HSPA+/4G Smartphone plan in order for data to work. if you haven't changed it already you can have them change it for you at the store or over the phone.

 

[bigtoysrock]

Ok, your 3GS sim is the exact same thing that goes in the inspire. Iphone 4 is micro sim.
The sim card from you iphone will not and i repeat will not have your contacts on it and you cant get them out of itunes. BUT, you can use the transfer data app on the inspire to connect to your iphone and sync the contacts and so forth, I believe, since I did not come from an iphone but a dell streak. You can always take both phones to att and they can put the contacts on the inspire for you.

Hope that sheds some light for you.

 

[Baldilocks]

Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to activate a phone. What SIM you have doesn't really matter - as long as it's for the right carrier.

 

[ItalianDragn]

I asked a number of different people at Costco and AT&T and got a "It should not be a problem" so I went ahead and upgraded my sim. I have kept all my contact in Outlook since my N-Gage 10 years ago (Nokia 5165 > N-Gage > HTC 8125 > Tilt > iPhone 3G > Inspire 4G), and recently uploaded them all to GMail in prep for switching.

 

[rpdxboxer]

I asked a number of different people at Costco and AT&T and got a "It should not be a problem" so I went ahead and upgraded my sim. I have kept all my contact in Outlook since my N-Gage 10 years ago (Nokia 5165 > N-Gage > HTC 8125 > Tilt > iPhone 3G > Inspire 4G), and recently uploaded them all to GMail in prep for switching.

How do you upload that stuff to your gmail account?

 

[kb58]

Take it back - I bought mine at Costco and it was working within a minute or so. He set it up and had it working as I watched. Talk to someone different than you did last time...

FWIW, I bought mine at the Costco in Carlsbad

 

[servspec04]

OK first it sould never take that long for a phone to start working. When you walk out of that store the phone should have been working. I went from the iphone 4 to the inspire, purchased at BB, If you have a 3gs than the sim will work in the inspire, They do have new 4g sim cards, I was told by AT&T to go into a corporate store and swap sims. I did not notice a difference in speeds. The sim that was removed from my inspire said 3g on it. The new sim card they gave me did not have any 3g markings on it and the gold contact points on back were different. The contact points were actually bigger. The only thing that should be stored on your SIM card would be your Contacts. You might have some other data stored on it as well.

 

[servspec04]

Ok, your 3GS sim is the exact same thing that goes in the inspire. Iphone 4 is micro sim.
The sim card from you iphone will not and i repeat will not have your contacts on it and you cant get them out of itunes. BUT, you can use the transfer data app on the inspire to connect to your iphone and sync the contacts and so forth, I believe, since I did not come from an iphone but a dell streak. You can always take both phones to att and they can put the contacts on the inspire for you.

Hope that sheds some light for you.

Hey I noticed you went from the Dell streak to the Inspire. I just got the inspire and I am thinking of returning it for the streak. "They lowered the price of the streak to 49.99 at BB. Did you have issues with the streak? What phone do you like the best? Also did you have 2.2 on the streak

 

[shawn1224]

3G sims and 4G sims work all the same. The 4G sim is really for their LTE phones when they get released.

I picked up a 4G sim yesterday from an AT&T store just for the heck of it and I'm seeing the exact same speeds as the 3G sim.

 

[cyclonejack]

I bought the HTC Inspire for my son this past Saturday and they switched his sim card from his iPhone 3G and the HTC worked when we walked out of the Costco. The sim card that came with the Inspire has no markings indicating 3G or 4G.

I do know the Inspire is not a 4G LTE phone and AT&T is switching to LTE for the second half of the year. I'm not sure how this will affect speeds on the inspire, but it downloads a little faster than my iPhone 4 currently.

 

[erwaso]

I did research on this whole 3g sim card deal and found that the ones with "3g" in a fireball was jist branding. The phone has the 3g and 4g capabilities not thesim. Any sim from a few years back will be the same as a new one that came in the box of your Inspire or Attrix 4g.

 

[qazzx]

I purchased my Inspire about a week ago at Best Buy, and I asked the nice lady about the 3G i saw on my Sim card. She said that when the 4G Sim cards roll out, I can get a free exchange at a corporate AT&T store. But i would listen to erwaso on this one.

 

[proframer92]

im using my 3g card and getting the (so called) 4g speeds lol

 

[audiobastard]

I just picked up an inspire 4g from craigslist. I popped in my 3g card which i got with the iphone 3gs, which i subsequently used on my captivate, which i just put into the inspire. Well, I'm getting about 3mb down which is normal in my area I guess. Apparently ATT doesn't have a 4g network yet but I DO get the H+ Icon and full bars. Here's the kicker. I got an e-mail and a txt telling me my inspire 4g requires a 4g sim card and to go talk to customer service..... yeah right. My phone is working just fine the way it is. I won't be going in to let them try to force me to pay for tiered data on a network they don't even have. None of the messages said they would automatically change my plan. So, until they try to threaten me with an automatic change, I'm perfectly happy with my 3g sim card.

They did say I can transfer my unlimited iphone plan for a 4g plan at the same cost. That might be worth it, but as of yet, I've seen folks with 4g sim cards getting worse download speeds than they would get using a 3g phone. I don't know whether its the radio or the sim card causing the issues, but I'm not going to mess with it when it's working just fine as it is.

 

[IrishSmash]

AT&T and Tmobile's '4G' is really HSPA+. HSPA+ is the true potential of 3G, and is the closest thing you can get to true 4G (LTE) without a LTE phone. So all this jabber of '4G' is really a load of wash. The reason the 3G sim card is in the Atrix and Inspire: the phones are more speed capable because they can handle HSPA+, but are both technically 3G phones.

 

[gadget069]

I ran my iPhone 4 on a gophone account without any issues, I used a micro sim adapter threw it in the inspire, works just fine.