Do I have to get verizon to release my iphone5?

[Joyride77]

I recently replaced my Iphone5 with an Iphone6+.  I want to give my Iphone 5 to my granddaughter for Christmas.  Do I need to get Verizon to release the Iphone5 so I can give it to her for use with her family's carrier on the west coast?

[vzw_customer_support]

Joyride77,

Great question. What a nice gift for your granddaughter. If she is on Verizon Wireless you can just send her the phone and her family will be able to activate it on their account. Our phones are designed to only work on Verizon Wireless.

RobinD_VZW

Follow us on twitter @VZWSupport

[zellerandy]

lol i dont know what this verizon rep is talking about but all verizon 4g phones are unlocked, can be used with nay carrier

[MOLDESIGNERS]

Thats apparently not true out here in Sprint land because I gave my phone to my daughter-in-law and was told that they could not activate it

[Tidbits]

Sprint won't activate it because they don't import IMEIs into their database.

[MOLDESIGNERS]

What does that mean?  I have no idea what IMEI's are and why another carrier cannot activate an unlocked phone?

[Tidbits]

CDMA work differently than GSM.

GSM doesn't require the phones identity to work, and validate itself to the network.

CDMA requires the device to identify itself and also the carrier database needs a copy of the phones Identity in it's database to let it connect.  Since it doesn't have the IMEI the phone can never connect.

Verizon and Sprint are slowly moving away from CDMA over to GSM, but it isn't far along enough as of yet.