[Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II] miketoasty:
So, this is just a write up of my switch from Verizon to Straight Talk and (Probably) everything in between.

So basically, this starts out with me being on Verizon for 9 years, ever since I owned my first flip phone. Although, every year it became harder and harder to stay on Verizon, especially with Nexus's devices coming out and basically all the "Cool" phones on the other carriers and Verizon being more and more money hungry and caring less and less about the customer. Sadly, Verizon just had the best coverage and moderate prices (Grandfathered onto Unlimited data). No one could match what I had.

I stuck it out with Verizon, although I hated everything about the company, there was no easy or cheap alternative that could match Verizon's data coverage (Or so I thought), but finally I got my break. Well not that easily, I spent all of the weekend thinking about different options to take with my plan since it will be ending in December (I'm also bundled my parents plan and need to get off of it so it's either try my luck with Verizon or find an alternative and finally get away from this hell hole of a company). I even took a drive to T-Mobile to test out a Nexus 4, and ended at Best Buy seeing what they would give me for my phone ($250 for anyone who is wandering, which isn't bad since the best I could find on Swappa/Craigslist was around $300) to see if I could buy one straight up. Although this sounded like a great idea, I could never go to T-Mobile with their spotty coverage, and AT&T is just as bad as Verizon with the same prices, I had no other options in terms of a GSM carrier.

Although the Nexus 4 is one hell of a device, I just couldn't force myself to get it with the Nexus 5 coming out so soon. So I did some looking and finally found out that it's actually pretty simple to get a Verizon phone onto another network (Since the Verizon Note 2 has LTE/CDMA/GSM bands). So I pulled the trigger and bought a Straight Talk SIM card and an unlimited everything plan for $55. This was a small price to pay to test if there was a cheap and unlimited alternative to Verizon that was able to somewhat rival their coverage. Again, this was more of a test than anything for me to see if I am going to stick it out with Verizon or move to a prepaid carrier.

I ended up going with the AT&T SIM as T-Mobile get's almost no reception in my area (As proven by my friends who have them and never have service) and got my SIM card in the mail yesterday. I was on CM10.2 for the Verizon Note 2 and was ready to just stick this card in and go, of course it wouldn't be as simple as just putting the card in and going right? Well yea, it did take a little messing around. First thing first, I put the card in, activated it per usual, and was actually able to get data, calling and I could receive texts. I couldn't on the other hand, send texts and didn't have signal bars in the status bar. So I played around with APN's for a while and couldn't get it to work. So I tried moving to a Touchwiz ROM. Of course the first I tried was just a stock rooted and low and behold Verizon blocks you from using SIM cards that aren't from Verizon (Did I mention how much I hate Verizon?).

I then went on to try Beans ROM and low and behold, no setup required, turned it on and it was good to go. Everything working, I had a smile from ear to ear just having this actually work. I never knew from the beginning if Straight Talk or even another SIM would work in my phone so everything was a crap shoot until it would finally work, but was lucky enough to have it work! Although, I could have stopped there, I just can't stand Touchwiz so I decided today I would give CM another shot. Still didn't work even when messing with APN's so I thought what the hell, let's try something crazy. Backed up my current ROM and tried flashing the toLTE CM10.2 ROM and of course it failed since my phone isn't the N7105. So I dug a little deeper, and copied the updater-script from the Verizon version to the toLTE version and it installed! So, I reboot it and think, man, I'm going to get stuck in a boot loop, but maybe I was just lucky today as I made it straight to my home screen, even better, I had full data, signal bars working, and was able to send texts. I thought this was amazing. I literally had my cake and was able to eat it too, until I tried GPS. Which of course didn't work. Another hour of trying crap and finally tried just copying the GPS.conf from the Verizon CM ROM over and low and behold, I had GPS! So I now have a perfectly working phone, on CM10.2 using a Straight Talk SIM/contract, using AT&T's network, all for $45 a month.

I'm sure a lot of you will read this and want your 5/10/15 minutes back, but this is just for the few that want to break away but don't have the hundreds of dollars to switch to different carriers, different phones, different plans just to find one that works. I was in this boat, and know how it feels. I have been using this phone for roughly a day and am going to make sure I have service everywhere I need it before making my final decision (So far work and home have full H+), but if all goes well will be finally ditching Verizon at the end of the year and getting myself a Nexus that I won't have to worry about having slow updates because my carrier is lazy. At this point, I couldn't be happier and hopefully get some of you guys to at least give it a shot like I did.

Please post a reply or DM me if you have any questions on my process, I will be more than happy to help out as much as I can!