How to make a Verizon branded phone (Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge) work properly with a foreign provider’s SIM card (Germany)?

[Kenika]

Hi there,

a friend of mine (from the US) gave me his Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and his Verizon account details to log in and take care of the issues I have with the phone. I’m from Germany and not a Verizon customer. Hopefully you can help me as I’m getting crazy: I’m writing and calling with Verizon USA, Verizon Germany and Samsung for almost two months now and got no help at all yet. Even the chat representatives that I contacted using my friend’s account didn’t even answer!

Whatever, here’s the problem:

My buddy used the phone for about a month in the US. Now it is my phone and I want to use it in my home country Germany with a German SIM card from FONIC (daughter of O2). Unfortunately, there are some issues now:

1. I can’t send text messages (SMS). I can receive, but the phone always adds a combination of numbers ("4911") before the acutal number I want to write to.

2. I can’t roam. I can only go online when I found a WiFi connection with a password I know.

3. The phone thinks my number is +4917600000000. I don’t know (yet) what issues this brings up. But my actual German number is different of course.

The German Samsung support as well as Verizon Germany told me to contact Verizon Wireless, but – as mentioned before – nobody even answers one single question in the expert chat. It’ll be great if you can help me with these issues.

Details about my phone:

Sim State: ok

Serial #: 8949226152311090911

According to the app "SIM Card Info", the SIM Card Operator is still Verizon - even if I insert my German FONIC SIM card. The Verizon SIM’s code is 26207.

Manufacturer: Samsung

Brand: Verizon

Model: SM-G925V

Code name: zeroltevzw

Phone type: GSM

IMEI: 990004870971847

Android: v5.1.1

Build: G925VVRU3BOG5 (can also be "0G5" at the end)

SDK version: 22

Thanks!

[Weth]

Did you try restoring the phone to factory? Have you gone into APN settings and manually changed them to your new carrier's settings?

To change APN settings:

First go to the main menu of the Galaxy S6, and then select Settings.  You can also slide down the notification menu from the top part of the screen and select on the gear like icon to access the settings menu of the phone

Now please go to  Mobile Data – and then tab on  Access Point Names, inside that APN menu, please go ahead and delete any existing APN you might have there, then proceed to create a New APN by using the menu key

During the process of creating the APN, you will need to provide the valid  APN Settings of the mobile company you are using. After all values have been introduced in the APN Settings, go ahead and SAVE it. Reboot phone.