I have had an old Obama phone for around 5 years; a friend bought me an LG Aristo 2 at the local PC Metro store; but after I stopped paying for the service, after a certain time period the phone became more useless -i.e. When I plugged it into my laptop via USB the laptop no longer recognized it; so I couldn't transfer anything, nor could I bluetooth.
I suppose I might have been able to use a micro sd card to get the photos/videos off the LG then transfer them to the laptop, but I'm not even sure that wasn't disabled. It was like the PC Metro people sent a kill signal to the phone.
But I found the IMEI (serial number) on the LG and I want to switch my free government lifeline service over to the LG, but am afraid it will fail; I went through a process to "unlock" the phone, and was able to connect to a wifi router; but I keep getting the PC Metro screen telling me I need to update; the government phone uses Virgin Mobile; so, do I need to do a factory reset to get rid of all the PC Metro stuff on the Aristo 2? Anyone?
I will appreciate any advice;

 

Thank you so much; I did wind up calling the Assurance Wireless people and was able to get a human being on the line, and for 5 dollars plus tax, I have a Unimax U69 3CL on the way...
The LG Aristo had a 15 digit serial number while the Assurance "Swap Phones" page said to enter the 11, 14 or 17 digit serial number of the new phone; that was the first clue that it might not work...
But, after having had bad experiences calling Assurance -long holds; barely intelligible English on the other end, with what I was saying echoing loudly about a second after I spoke; I was glad that a person answered on a quiet line. I decided to take advantage of their "free replacement" option (that I was eligible for because of how long I had suffered with the ANS UL40 (which is about the size of a small stack of playing cards) and so within 5 to 7 days, I'll have a phone that should work through their carrier, and on their network, and with their service.