Hello Everyone,

I have been tossing this idea around all day, but Sprint now has SIM cards in their BlackBerry 8830's. And the iPhone can be unlocked to any GSM provider, so....do you think it is possible to unlock the iPhone to Sprint. Sprint's SIM card is "SIM is unlocked and will accept an in-market international carrier's SIM for voice services"

Does anyone have an 8830 for sprint, an iPhone, and $99 to get it locked. Chances are no, but i just figured i would throw this idea out there, i just had to tell it to someone.

 

The SIM in some Sprint phones is there SOLELY to allow the phones to roam internationally - the Sprint network itself does not (can not) use SIM cards in any way.

Tom

 

That is what i figured, i was waiting for conformation from my friend who has the 8830 on whether or not his phone would work with the card. Idk..., i just dream of a day when sprint is no longer CDMA... But it gets them more money, because you cant just go out and buy a different phone and use your sim card. Noooooo, you have to get the sprint phone, either from sprint, or eBay. But hey, i still love my 700p

Thanks for clearing this up Tom!

 

elaborating on what tomas said ...

Sprint is a CDMA network, specifically 1xrtt and EVDO, which doesn't need nor have a use for a SIM card.
Cingular/ATT and T-Mobile on the other hand are a GSM network, which, while GSM doesn't require SIM cards, they make it a requirement by using the SIM cards both to store customer information and authenticate on the network.

What's more, that 8830 runs on 800 and 1900 mhz CDMA frequencies, which is the north american standard. But the GSM setup on that device is on the 900 and 1800 mhz freq, so even with a US sim card, it still wouldn't register GSM.


Besides, without a CDMA chip set into the phone, it won't work.

 

Won't work, the i phone is GSM(AT&T, tmobile) based, while sprint/verizon are CDMA based.