iPhone 6S Plus as tablet only - No phone / data plan - Would that work?

I received an iPhone as a gift and do not plan on using it for a phone due to size, and I'm not a huge apple fan, but would like to use it in some form as it's such a high end device.

I was looking into cheap tablets that I can lug around the house to watch my training videos on, but this seems like it could be both a solution to that, and a good camera / ipod as it's the 128GB version.

My question is, without activating it with a carrier or having a SIM card installed, is this still fully functional in terms of getting apps from the app store and accessing said apps? I didn't want to pull the stuff apart and start testing it just yet, in case this idea will not work without a carrier connection / SIM card.

Please advise away apple experts, thanks!

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Comments

Mike-Mike

that's a pricey gift

ande0255

That is a very astute observation.

CSCOnoob

Yes, it will work. Probably not a good idea though. It's pretty expensive to use it only as a tablet.

ande0255

Well instead of carrying a camera / mp3 player / tablet with me on vacations, I was thinking this may be a semi-compact option for that.

tpatt100

I did some googling and see several posts talking about you need a sim card even if it is old and deactivated just to "active" the iPhone for any use.

I bought a Windows phone last year to use just as a podcast/music player and remember having to activate it even though I never bought a plan for it.

I think all iPhones have sim cards installed already so you probably can just activate it and use it like an iPod Touch. I have a 6s Plus and use it as a phone since I hardly use it for voice calls anyways so the size doesn't bother me. It's a good enough size for watching TV shows at work during my lunch and also watching Coursera or EdX videos that I download through their apps for offline viewing.

The camera is excellent for pictures and recording video, the Plus has image stabilization for recording videos which I can say works really good.

kohr-ah

Yes you should be able to.

Otherwise consider selling it and getting a nice tablet plus some extra money for apps and what not for it?

thomas_

I believe you can activate it over your wifi connection. You just need to know your wifi password.

stryder144

Unless they've changed things up in the last year, you will only need an Apple account (itunes/icloud) to use it in the manner you intend. It shouldn't have a sim card installed, unless it came from a carrier. Of course, if it came from AT&T/Verizon/et al, you will need to activate it through them, not Apple, if you want to make non-emergency phone calls.