Its still an unlocked nexus device, it will work with any gsm service out of the box. I got mine a week after placing the order and the phone looks brand new.
It is unlocked. I popped in my T-Mobile SIM and it worked with no hassle. No need to call anyone.Greetings,
I too took advantage of the stack social deal, just for the sake of the phone, lol. The service sounds a little bit unreliable, and more trouble than its worth. Not to derail or talk bad about the carrier, but I just play on popping in my T-Mobile SIM and using it as a secondary or backup phone. Is it that easy, or do I have to call freedom pop and actually have them carried unlock the device (confused as its advertised as unlocked).
Second question, how long did it take you guys who went in on this deal too, to receive your phone? I played my order nearly 3 weeks ago and still no shipping confirmation.. still on "allocating" stage on the website. And how is the overall condition of your devices been upon receiving them, being refurbs? Almost new condition, cosmetically?
Thanks for sharing your experience(s) with me!
I flashed both Stock and CM but neither even recognized the Freedompop SIM card.
Guess we have to stay on their ROM if we want to use their service.
How did you do that? I loaded my T-Mobile SIM card and it used T-Mobile's LTE network, not FreedomPop's. Did you try this while on FP's ROM or only on cataclysm?
At least this confirms (for me) that it is unlocked and I could move it to T-Mobile after the 1 year of free service.
I swapped SIM cards but can't call out or text on tmobile. Did you have this problem?
The phone is a refurbished b stock. Mine was in great shape except a small nick on the right side. So I cannot complain. The bootloader comes unlocked and there is a superuser zip on the phone so all you have to do is flash a custom recovery to flash that zip. Now I have to figure out whether I can put custom roms on this puppy.
Hi onurd,
I got the nexus 5 and was wondering what a superuser zip is. I've never done customizing on phones but am willing to try since I can't get the phone to work swapping out with our tmobile sim card. Tried a couple of ways with APN settings etc but it didn't work. Freedompop even told me that it is a CDMA phone only or use on sprint network. I've heard many times that you can use it on GSM. Could use some help to make it work. Have any links that I can follow or some directions (dumb it down please) so I can use the phone. I really love the N5 feel and smoothness. Thx
Fran
Superuser has to do with rooting the device/phone hence gaining administrator rights to it
Sent from my N5
Hi onurd,
I got the nexus 5 and was wondering what a superuser zip is. I've never done customizing on phones but am willing to try since I can't get the phone to work swapping out with our tmobile sim card. Tried a couple of ways with APN settings etc but it didn't work. Freedompop even told me that it is a CDMA phone only or use on sprint network. I've heard many times that you can use it on GSM. Could use some help to make it work. Have any links that I can follow or some directions (dumb it down please) so I can use the phone. I really love the N5 feel and smoothness. Thx
Fran
Can you help me with the remainder of my original question??
Fran, I bet if you go to settings, factory reset your phone and when I boots up, turn phone off and insert SIM card, reboot, it might connect on its own.Can you help me with the remainder of my original question??
Yeah, the Ambient Display was a pleasant surprise. Whoever makes FreedomPop's corporate images is probably a ROMhead like us.I also took advantage of this incredible deal.
However I've had quite a few freezes with the ROM it's running.
It seemed just like Stock, however looking around I've noticed they've tweaked Stock quite a bit.
One of the most significant (and surprising) tweaks was the inclusion of Ambient Display.
I'm about to flash some ROMs and see how it works. Update this later.
Hi onurd,
I got the nexus 5 and was wondering what a superuser zip is. I've never done customizing on phones but am willing to try since I can't get the phone to work swapping out with our tmobile sim card. Tried a couple of ways with APN settings etc but it didn't work. Freedompop even told me that it is a CDMA phone only or use on sprint network. I've heard many times that you can use it on GSM. Could use some help to make it work. Have any links that I can follow or some directions (dumb it down please) so I can use the phone. I really love the N5 feel and smoothness. Thx
Fran
I thought I'd also share my experience with this phone.
After I got my nexus (in very good condition, it looked new), I tried to change the default messaging app, only to see that I couldn't. This is when I started learning more about how freedompop operates.
I went overseas, intending to hop off the plane and pop in a local prepaid SIM. However, this was not the case. It could pick up a signal, but not connect to it. I had previously talked to freedompop support over Twitter, and they told me that I could use the phone with another carrier as long as I deactivated it from freedompop first. This was also stated on the page where I bought the phone. Turns out that's not true. I hadn't done this because I thought it would only affect the CDMA Sprint network, so I decided to contact them (this is while I'm overseas) and deactivate it.
After waiting on hold for over an hour, I finally got to talk to a human. After I explained the situation, he said he could deactivate my phone, but it probably won't help because they use their own ROM. I then asked him if it would work if I put a custom ROM on it, and he said yes and that some customers do that. He deactivated my phone anyways, and sure enough, the other SIM still didn't work.
I spent a night rooting my phone and putting AICP on it. The phone came with an unlocked bootloader, but no TWRP. I also found a folder on the internal storage called "!ReadyToFlash" that had a supersu and busybox zip in it, and I found the ROM zip made by freedompop.
Once I had a custom ROM on the phone, it worked fine. Once I get back to the States I'm gonna put back on the freedompop ROM, but I sure can tell you, once my year of free service is up, I'm dumping freedompop and getting Ting or Cricket Wireless. While their actual employees are great and dev-friendly, I haven't had a great experience overall.
Sure. I assume you mean use the phone with a different carrier overseas. Keep in mind, however, that people have had different experiences with this phone. This is just what worked for me. Backup all your data before doing anything as well, just to be safe.Hello, can you please post what I need to do to make the N5 usable overseas? Also, I though that I could simply install the freedompop app and use it that way. Is that not correct? Thank you
Has anyone had any luck using the Nexus 5 with Metro PCS or with Verizon? Was it a difficult process? Thanks for any information.
Yes, you should be able to pop it in and go after flashing the stock Google image out a different ROM with a gsm carrier, but you'll want to deactivate the phone from FreedomPop service before you do (especially when using the phone with another cdma carrier) just to be safe.It'sas easy as flashing a differnt rom since "stock" will want you to register with freedompop. For any gsm carrier such as MetroPCS it's as easy as popping in the sim, however it might be different with verizon since you'll probably have to register the imei.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-1D2PtniYDCbUh0YXFtc1RNbTQ/ Hope it helps!I was wondering could someone post the freedompop zip that came on the phone? I foolishly deleted mine but I'd like to experiment with it now.
I flashed both Stock and CM but neither even recognized the Freedompop SIM card.
Guess we have to stay on their ROM if we want to use their service.
Sure. I assume you mean use the phone with a different carrier overseas. Keep in mind, however, that people have had different experiences with this phone. This is just what worked for me. Backup all your data before doing anything as well, just to be safe.Hello, can you please post what I need to do to make the N5 usable overseas? Also, I though that I could simply install the freedompop app and use it that way. Is that not correct? Thank you
I also got the deal from freedom pop though I'm now regretting it as I'm reading this whole issue about the messaging app.... especially the fact that it's only a voip service being used, might as well use hangouts then!
Besides that, how good is the overall condition of your devices? I got tricked into thinking it was a genuinely "new" nexus 5 by pocketnow, nowhere did it read refurbished or "pre owned" until I got the email from freedompop.
Well that's depressing, hopefully someone finds what they did and is able to port the contents from their rom to another. Or we could also contact their support personally? they seem to be pretty dev-friendly. Have you tried messing with the prl? It's been a while since I've dealt with sprint
They use a sim card plus a couple apps. I think you can activate the sim on the Nexus 5 and then use the sim in other phones too. Haven't tried it.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk