Using Iphone 5 Overseas - SE Asia

@BillGatesFondue - happy it worked for you as well.

@wjosten - I have a better solution: Cricket iPhone 5 owners around the world should flip them on eBay as decorative paperweights - that's the only way to get back a cool $1 for their useless piece of metal 👿

Where were the phones purchased? From Apple? Unlocked?

Unless you purchased these iPhones directly from Apple, as officially unlocked GSM models, you do not have officially unlocked iPhones. Rather, the two phones you purchased are carrier locked to US carriers...one appears to be Cricket...& will only activate, in the US, on the appropriate carrier network the phone is locked to.

If your intent was to use these outside of the US, I'm afraid you wasted your money.

Sadly, as wjosten has stated, you have iPhones that are locked to US networks and you have wasted your money.

You read wrong.

I'm sorry, but your best bet is to return these phones for a refund or re-sell them on eBay.

The only source for officially unlocked iPhones, in the US, is directly from Apple...no where else.

@wjosten - you are WRONG!

Cricket's iPhone 5 is indeed SIM unlocked for international use - that is their OFFICIAL policy.

BUT, there are technical problems with the way unlock is currently implemented - so SIM unlock support is currently shaky.

The official word from Cricket is that their iPhone 5 will NOT connect to GSM networks in areas where there is CDMA coverage (any CDMA network, not specifically Cricket's).

That is, however, not entirely true from my personal experience. I live in an area (outside the US) that has CDMA coverage, and can use my Cricket phone with local SIM until it gets a carrier settings update (every 2 weeks or so), by which time it gets disconnected - requiring full erase and reactivate to reconnect.

I assume that is a faulty technical implementation of their official policy (unlocked internationally / locked within the US) - but that's just my guess.

Hopefully this buggy implementation will be fixed in iOS 6.1 - that is what I've heard from my local carrier - so keeping my fingers crossed.

So does it mean that I should move to the area where my local CDMA network will not be availible in order to activate cricket iPhone 5 with the GSM sim card?

@BillGatesFondue - I would try that if I were you. No guarantees it will work in your country / your carrier, but that is what Cricket's customer support told me.

You'll need to go through "Reset->Erase all content and settings" on your iPhone (do not connect to iTunes), and then go through the activation wizard. It may take a few minutes to lock on the GSM signal, so be patient.

If it doesn't work, retry the whole procedure a few times until it does (once I had to redo the procedure 8 times until it worked, so, again, be patient).

Also, carrier settings update may break connectivity for you as well. You cannot directly control when iPhone fetches these settings, but you can prolong the time until it does:

1. NEVER go into settings->general->about

2. NEVER connect to iTunes (you CAN back up to iCloud instead)

Hope that helps.

So again - I should go through activation procedure WITH sim card inserted? Am I right?

Also what do you think about using something like box wrapped in foil to separate the phone from CDMA?

I would actually cover the roof of your house with aluminum foil...standard works just fine, you don't need heavy duty. That should do the trick.

You know, these unlocked "Cricket" phones work great, everywhere, with zero issues...

I actually did it! That is what I do -

1)activate the phone W/O any sim

2)go to the settings

3)insert sim

4)reset all data end settings

5)activate phone with sim card installed.

If it is not work for you - try that again from the 1st step. Here is the image from my phone... You cant imagine my face, when I see the bars on the top left...

FYI iOS 6.1 solved the carrier settings update issue for me, as originaly promised by my local carrier.

As the carrier bundle version for iOS 6.1 was bumped up, I am not sure whether the root cause in 6.0.x was iOS itself, or just faulty settings by my local carrier.