Upgrading a pre-paid phone

tallgeeze

So a few years ago my horrible sprint contract finally ended and I vowed to never get another contract again. I went to the pre-paid route and never looked back. I went with T-Mobile and it has been good to me.

The service is great, but the problem now is my actual phone. It's old and has been tossed around like a rag doll. I'm having trouble with the buttons now and I want to upgrade. The thing is that I can't figure out how to do it. I tried calling the T-mobile customer service, but I keep getting cut after I choose to speak to a live person.

I found some phones on their website, but based on the descriptions it's like buying a whole new service. I want to keep the number I have, but just upgrade the phone. Is there a way to do this?

Sorry if that was verbose. I just had coffee. Thx in advance for any clues on what to do.

TheDiscoBandit

To my knowledge, T-mobile is based of of SIM cards, so really all you need to do is go into the store, ask the monkey which phones are compatible with their pre-paid service, purchase the phone you like and then simply swap out the SIM card from one phone to the other. My basis for this is that I have an ex-girlfriend who had T-mobile and we lost damaged a few of her phones and used the older ones she had until the new one arrived.

Crashtard

TheDiscoBandit wrote: »

To my knowledge, T-mobile is based of of SIM cards, so really all you need to do is go into the store, ask the monkey which phones are compatible with their pre-paid service, purchase the phone you like and then simply swap out the SIM card from one phone to the other. My basis for this is that I have an ex-girlfriend who had T-mobile and we lost damaged a few of her phones and used the older ones she had until the new one arrived.

Pretty much this. The only bad thing about going into their store is that you're probably going to get ripped off on the price of the phone. You might consider checking ebay for phones that are compatible with the prepaid tmobile service.

Trillian

Any unlocked unbranded phone will work, and will allow you such nice things as custom homemade ringtones.
Craigslist might be able to help with finding one.