Unlocked Cricket

Hey there, Charles!

Thank you for reaching out about the carrier confusion. According to our listing policy for unlocked devices, products within the "Unlocked Carrier" category must be factory unlocked devices that work on all carriers with compatible radio hardware and network bands.

This means that in order to be listed under the Unlocked Phones category, the phone must have come unlocked from the factory -- and they can't be a previously locked device that was later carrier unlocked after the contract expired.

Without looking at the individual listings that you're referring to, my guess is that the seller is merely advertising a listing as also working on Cricket. However, if you feel that a listing was improperly categorized by the seller, you can feel free to ask for clarification in the listing comments or reach out to Swappa Support using our Help Desk.

Also, regarding your current Sprint plan: From what I have read, it appears as if T-Mobile is shutting down Sprint's legacy 3G CDMA network on March 31, 2022. I think the safest bet at that point would be an unlocked phone that's compatible with the network bands used by all current US carriers (including T-Mobile), such as the iPhone 11, iPhone XR, Galaxy S20 FE or newer.

Hope this helps!

I'm looking at an iPad Pro 12.9 6th gen that lists as "Unlocked, Cricket, Ting". Cricket only uses some of the bands that Verizon uses, so if I try to use this on Verizon will I be limited to areas where they have towers with those bands? I was in South Carolina recently and my iPhone kept switching to band 13 which was weak, when band 66 was much stronger. Is that an internal preference programmed in the phone? If so I'm with Verizon and don't want to get a cellular enabled iPad that doesn't work with all Verizon bands.