He took out the Sim card and battery....so I know we would have to get new ones. But where do we get these things and how much is it going to cost if we decide to use this thing?
I think you can grab a sim card from Walmart or an IPhone store or possibly even from your present smart phone. Amazon has them for about 5 or 6 beans. The battery is another subject though. I even asked Yvonne about it and she supported my thought that it can't be changed by anyone less than a professional so the likelihood that your landlord pulled it also might be a misunderstanding. Unless of course, he IS a professional.
Since it is an older iPhone, probably the battery is just not holding a charge for long anymore. One thing that you can do is to order a case from Amazon for your iPhone that has a built-in battery, and when you charge it, then it charges the battery in the phone as well as the additional battery in the charger case. What series is your new iPhone ? There should be a model number on the back of the phone that shows this, and knowing what series the phone is will help me to know what you can do to get it operational. If they reset the phone to factory specs, then all you should have to do is to charge it up, connect to your wifi or cellular, and the phone will guide you through registering it to you.
It's a 4S and he did not remove the battery....but he does not have the cord charger for it. I think my daughter has one like I would need to use to see if the battery will charge. He hadn't even removed the sim card...but I did and gave it to him. We use Consumer Cellular and they will send us a new sim card free if the battery charges and we decide to use this phone. Right now we just have a flip phone that I am satisfied with but since this IPhone was given as a free gift to us...I'm checking into the difference I would have to pay to use it. I am not into texting or using it to check my email, etc. but I would like to Facetime my grandkids every once in awhile. Do you think I could do that with a 1G plan? @Yvonne Smith
Considering the recent flap over Apple, slowing data and Iphone batteries... get a new battery, imo. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/1/1...y-replacement-slowing-old-phones-waste-repair
Thanks for sharing this article @Harry Havens. I do remember when this came out but did not really pay that much attention to it because I was not using and IPhone...and may not still.
My comment wasn't intended to discourage you from using an iPhone, but rather changing the battery for best results.
When you are home is probably when you would be using FaceTime anyway, and then you can use the phone on your wifi, so it would not even use any cellular data if you do that. You can get a lightning cord at Walmart to charge up the battery, and might just need to keep it on the charger more often. Robin told me that getting a new battery installed has to be done at the Apple Store, and it would just be easier and cheaper to get a battery-case for it. If you do that, then it will charge with the regular mini-USB charging port, and you will not even need a lightning cord, since the mini-USB will charge both the phone and the charger case. That is what I would do, in any case, rather than spend a lot of money for a new battery in such an old phone. Here is one on Amazon for under $8.
Yes I know and I appreciate that. I just don't know if the extra expense each month will be worth it...I'm doing the research on that now and will make up my mind after I have all the facts.
My daughter has a cord charger for the IPhone given to us...I am picking it up this morning after I drop my Honey off at work. Once I see if or how well it charges then we will go from there in making up our minds whether to use that phone or not. Whatever we decide it was very nice of our former Landlord and good friend to give it to us.
Part of how long the charge will lasts depends on what programs you are running on the phone, as well as how much you are using it. Just sitting there, the charge should pretty much last for a whole day; but if you are talking on it, and have apps installed (playing games, etc), then the battery will run down sooner, just like happens with your flip-phone. If you are mainly going to use it just to FaceTime your family, then it really doesn’t matter how long the charge holds because you can have it charged up and then make your call and if you connect to your wifi, then you would not even need an active cell connection. If you use it in airport mode, then it won’t be trying to connect with a cell network, and that should help to save the battery also.
Thanks Yvonne for sharing that info with me. All my daughters have IPhones of course but I doubt if they will be able to find much time to teach me much about them. I really don't know at this point in time what I will be using it for or even if I will. Will it connect to my Hot Spot Wi Fi?
Yes, it will connect right up to your wifi, and would be basically like a mini-tablet/iPad as long as it is not connected to cell service. You could use it anywhere that there is a free wifi, or at home, or with your daughter’s wifi if you are visiting her. Not only that; but since she has an iphone also, it will be super-easy to send or receive pictures and iMessages from her. Speaking of pictures, you will love the camera ! It is so handy not to need to carry a camera around because you can take awesome pictures right from your phone, and the front-facing camera will take selfies when you want to do that. Since this phone was made back in 2011, there have, of course, been a lot of new advances since then; but it is still an excellent phone, and I am sure that you will love all of the great things it can do, once you get used to having it. At this point, I do have to warn you that once you have an iPhone, you will never want to go back to another brand of phone ever again. Here is the video that Apple put out when the iPhone 4s was released, and it will give you a good overview of what your phone can do.
Okay. The phone is charging and it shows the entrance page and says: "Slide to unlock" and when I did that it opened up and showed a number pad and said I need to put in the passcode. So here's my question: "Will my new Sim card have the passcode to put in?" ...since we took the old Sim card out and gave it back to our friend. Or do I have to get the his old passcode to go any further?