Sim Free iPhone 7 on Straight Talk

Question

ChrisP1972 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sim Free iPhone 7 on Straight Talk

My wife and I currently use iPhone 5s's on Straight Talk, and I just bought 2 new sim free iPhone 7's from the Apple Store.

I would like to find out if I should anticipate any issues with getting them registered and working on Straight Talk.

I'm also curious about features that come on the phone that Straight Talk is going to disable. I believe when you put in your sim card that they disable features on your phone, which really kind of ****** me off since it's my phone that I paid full price for.

When those features are disabled, can those same features be re-enabled by a different carrier with their sim? I just want to make sure that I'm not going to permanently disable a feature. I believe all of the other carries do the same kind of crap too, but the features each disables may vary.

Also, I'm curious to know if I need a different Sim card, or if I can just swap the sim cards that are in our 5s's.

iPhone 7, iOS 10.3.1

Posted on May 10, 2017 12:26 PM

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Answer 1

ChrisP1972 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 10, 2017 1:28 PM in response to KiltedTim

1) wifi calling

2) sms texting

There might be others but those are the 2 that I care about.

I've used AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon up until last year, and finally got fed up with their practice of charging fees and surcharges (and fees on surcharges and surcharges on fees, and fees on taxes on surcharges, etc) on top of their advertised rates and decided to dump them. The only big carrier I would consider is t-mobile, but I have no experience with them and I'm hesitant about their coverage in my area.

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Answer 2

KiltedTim

Level 10

230,376 points

May 10, 2017 1:36 PM in response to ChrisP1972

WiFi calling is a feature that requires carrier support. ST does not "disable" it on your iPhone. They simply don't support the use of that feature.

They also do not disable SMS texting. They have "issues" making it work on an unlocked phone, as opposed to a phone purchased through StraightTalk.

It can and does work if you purchase a StraightTalk phone. There are people for whom it works using unlocked phones on StraightTalk. That's a topic for a different forum... one focused on StraighTalk. If you buy your phone through StraightTalk you won't have that problem.

One other 'feature' that I'm pretty sure you can't use on ST is the personal hotspot...

There are tradeoffs for using a discount carrier...

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Answer 3

KiltedTim

Level 10

230,376 points

May 10, 2017 12:30 PM in response to ChrisP1972

I have no idea what "features" you believe StraightTalk disables on your phone, but it seems if you have that many reservations about them, you might just want to use a different carrier.

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Answer 4

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

May 10, 2017 1:35 PM in response to ChrisP1972

Ask Straight Talk if using their SIM permanently removes features or not.

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