(First part is copy from a post I made on r/Snapchat)
Basically, my parents don’t let me use my phone at night, however I’m an angsty teenager that wants a social like, so I’m using my old IPhone (SE?), but Snapchat hasn’t changed sense I got rid of the SIM card.
And what I mean by “behind” is that it hasn’t changed at all. I see people I last messaged weeks ago, and if I try to send a message it, just doesn’t work. It’s sort of like a snapshot of time.
It’s like if you took a screenshot of all my friends and was able to interact with it. It’s fine on my current phone, but no matter how I interact on this I can’t talk to anyone. I don’t see any stories or see who added me. Like I’m frozen in time.
(This is added for this subreddit)
So after some further investigation, I it’s most of the phone, except anything that connects to servers like discord or Roblox.
I have no clue how this glitch could happen.
It’s not a glitch, it’s the intended behaviour of the software on your phone.
Many apps (like WhatsApp, for example) use your phone’s SIM card as a unique identifier to log you into their service. This is important as it prevents someone else (e.g. somone with your old phone) from logging in to that app/service and compromising your security/privacy.
This is usually also a part of helpful features that allows you to migrate your account for the app/service over to a new phone by associating your SIM with the service.
But it also means that without that unique identifier, you can’t access the app/service.
Maybe another way of thinking about it is your phone uses it’s phone number to receive calls and that is tied to the SIM card, and some apps (like receiving calls, sending/receiving old-fashioned standard text messages via the cellular network, WhatsApp, and I guess Snapchat? idk) use thst phone number to “log in”, so when you use an old phone without a SIM card, it will work for stuff that just needs your Apple/Google account, or stuff that can be accessed via the Internet through your local WiFi network, but nothing that needs your phone number or the cellular network to “log in” to use.
Depending on the specific app, it might work if you swap the SIM into the other phone, but unless the app has been designed to maintain continuity between multiple devices, you’ll find it does weird stuff. For example, WhatsApp messages will be “stranded” on each device, because it expects to you backup everything to the cloud first before migrating to a new device. Plus, you are more likely to wear out the contacts on the sim, swapping it in and out every day, I have experienced this, and it sucks.
Personally, I’d just use Discord or something else that doesn’t need the SIM. It’s way simpler.
But also, as an adult, I have enough patience to simply wait till morning to see updates to the group chat or whatever. And also understand the long term value in a consistent sleep schedule, so I’m honestly kinda with your parents on this one, hahaha!