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I want to buy the Pixel 5a for my mom, and she has Verizon. I've done some research but I can't figure out a clear answer on how difficult it is to get it to work. She doesn't even need the 5g to work, just 4g LTE. I just want to know if it's as easy as putting her current SIM card into the pixel.
From what I read as long as you don’t buy the google FI version it should work. For some reason for the 5a 5G, the imeis aren’t recognized by Verizon.
I have a Pixel 5a working through US Mobile (on Verizon) and it works fine and had no problems provisioning either and I've had it working for 2 weeks.
I know there were lots of problems in 2021 when it came out because the device isn't CDMA, but given that everyone is using LTE now and 3G networks will be going away by end of year, I can only assume based on my success they've sorted it out.
Regardless, here's some info from the verizon community to proactively help if you get a problem (the phone needs to be provisioned as 'cdma-less':
https://community.verizon.com/t5/Google-Pixel/Pixel-5a-not-receiving-SMS-messages/td-p/1223085/page/2?msclkid=3e090843c69211ec95c1b9ea963b8dc3