Text sending without SIM.

[cobminor]

Hi,

My name is Clive and I have a bit of a lack of understanding of iphone operation. I have tried searching for this but to no avail. I have had an iphone 4 given to me by my son, who now has a 5. I have deleted all of his information and loaded my own from my 3gs. This morning I tried sending him a message from the phone, that has no SIM card it yet, to see what would happen. The phone is on my home internet router so it browses etc. My son got an email on his phone, forwarded from his own email account, not from mine. I am thinking that in the abscence of a SIM the phone used my email account to contact his email account which then sent him the message. The message does not show up in my gmail 'sent messages' folder though.

Am I correct or am I missing something? Thanks for any help.

 

[Thomasjtsi]

The only way to send and/or receive a message from an iDevice w/o a SIM card is if it's being sent or received from another iDevice... and the iDevice w/o a SIM is connected to Wifi. iMessages do not use your standard text messaging via your wireless provider. They use Apple's servers to send them.

 

[cobminor]

Thomas,

Thanks for the reply. I have taken this a bit further now. I have sent my son a message with my 3gs after removing the sim and the message reported that it came from me. The suspition now is that I have not erased all of my sons info. from this iphone4. I have reset the phone, changed the Apple id to mine, reset icloud and its mail address to mine and synced it with itunes a few times to get the apps the same as on my 3gs. What have I missed.

 

[cobminor]

I may have sorted this, the information for Facetime and Imessage was still my sons, including the 'send to' box, now that I have cleared that I cannot send anymore so I guess when I get a sim it will allow me to set it up.

 

[Bula]

You are sending text messages via iMessage (thats iPhone to iPhone) texts should appear in a blue text buble..... this service is FREE via 3G or WiFi

 

[hookbill]

Thanks to both Thomasjtsi and Bula. This is how I learn things, much appreciated.

 

[Skull One]

While iMessage is a free version of Text Messaging for iOS, remember that if you do it over 3G or LTE, it will eat into your data plan. Normally for text messages, that isn't a big deal. But for Pictures messages (MSM) it can actually make a difference. I had to turn my youngest daughters iMessage off because of how many pictures messages she was sending. It was better for her to use the unlimited SMS/MMS feature under Verizon cost wise.