Forum Discussion
How to keep existing prepaid account and plan when upgrading to a new phone
Hello. I currently have a prepaid plan. My phone is old and I want to upgrade. My friend wants to give me his old phone (which is much newer than mine) to use. It is compatible with t-mobile's network as far as I can tell--Friend had a t-mobile plan but it was post-paid. How do I keep my existing prepaid plan, service, and phone number and move to using the new (friend's) phone?
Hola @CherylG If you are on T-Mobile Prepaid service and your friend gave you a T-Mobile branded phone, then you can use it on your prepaid account. If you can take your physical sim card out of your phone and put it in that phone, then that is usually the easiest way of getting your service on that phone. If that phone only uses eSIM, then you can contact our support teams to help you with that. You can also go to that store to have them help you with converting to an eSIM and they will not charge you to do that.
If you purchase a new phone from BestBuy, then you will not be charged anything extra for getting the phone. They can help you get it set up or you can take it to a T-Mobile store to get it set up for no additional charge. Having it all done at BestBuy means that you don't have to make any additional stops at other stores.
Just take your sim out of the old phone and put it in the new phone. Your plan is tied to the sim not the phone.
Thank you -- Is this true for a prepaid plan? I keep finding out that things that work for postpaid plans don't work for prepaid plans.
All Tmobile phones will work for either post paid or prepaid plans. The difference is the sim. I have a Pixel 4XL I bought for my post paid plan and now it's on a prepaid plan.
What if the new phone has an eSIM. Will it work? How do I get it to work?
You need to transfer your current sim to an esim. Support should be able to help.
Thanks but will it work and be compatible, and would I be able to keep my current prepaid plan on the new phone with an eSIM? I don't understand what an eSIM is exactly.
Here's a support article for eSims.
Thanks very helpful. But will it work to transfer a regular sim phone to an eSIM phone for a prepaid plan?
So now I'm thinking of just buying a new phone at best buy. I'm mostly interested in Samsung Galaxy models. Are there certain ones that will work and ones that won't? If I can find that out then I'll be sure to buy one that will work.
