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Comment by nytesky | Hacker News Reader

We have a bunch of old iPhones for kids, but we can’t setup iMessage on those phones without an active phone number. We can setup iMessage (email based) on iPad and iPod Touches, so this is frustrating. I want my kids to not be full on cellular internet, but I like that they can message relatively safely friends and family with iMessage.

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We use a cell service called Tello for my kids phones. For $5/mo you can get a plan with 100 minutes of voice calls, sms, and no data whatsoever. It's perfect for my kids, since I don't really want them to have mobile data anyway

Thank you!

I have been looking for a cheaper, no-data SIM card to use with 2FA Mules - this is very helpful.

I'm using an old iPhone without a SIM card as a spare device and iMessage works on it WIFI-only. But I have to admit that initial setup of the Apple ID wasn't done on this phone. Perhaps you could setup your kids Apple IDs on another device and then use them on the old phones with iMessage as well?

You're missing something; I have a first gen SE that's got no SIM and it has email based iMessage setup and working. It's for my son to FaceTime with family.

I don’t believe this is true or something let’s me not need any [working] sim in my phones. I can log into an iCloud account and FT, iMessage accounts on non sim working phones too.

I thought you could set iMessage up to use an email address. I did that before but it's been a while.

You do not need a phone number for iMessage. You can make an apple account with an email address, and use the email address as your Apple ID.

Strange, I have iMessage set up on an old iPhone XS with no SIM and no phone number tied to the Apple ID

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