Cell phone terminology help

[ha98ed14]

We have sprint. DH's phone is on the fritz, but we don't want to buy a new one from them and renew the contract. I looked on CL to see what might be aailable used and I found a lot of choices. A bunch of them say "clean ESN" and another one, a blackberry, says "Flashed to Metro PCS." Does anyone know what any of this means?

ETA: I just saw that this was my 3,333 post. And it's 1/1/11. Must be my day for palindromes... (That's a palindrome, right?)

[codex57]

ESN is the serial # for the phone. Clean means you'll be able to call Sprint and activate the phone.

Flashed means set for the metropcs software. I think you can reflash back to sprint but that's just more work. I'd prolly just skip that one. May have a bad sprint esn.

[khm]

Yeah, a clean ESN just means that the phone is "paid off" by the previous owner's contract / 2 year extension.

If someone walks into a store and gets a $500 retail phone for "free" or for $50 or whatever, they need to extend their contract. If they sell the phone too early, then sprint flags that ESN as "bad" and won't let the new 2nd hand buyer activate it.