I have a Tesco pay-as-you go mobile phone. Cheapest of the cheap. The bit where the charger goes in has broken, so now the battery is dead it can't be recharged. Question: can I just take out the SIM card and put into another handset and carry on as normal? I don't know how these things work, so your'e dealing with a bit of a techno-thickie!
"If you buy any PAYG phone, they're not on any network until you put your sim card in. "
Not correct. If you buy a subsidised PAYG phone it will be locked to the network that subsidised it. It's locked before it gets to the retailer.
but rojash, the questioner wants to know about Tesco PAYG so subsidised phones don't really enter into it. Why overcomplicate things when the OP wants a nice simple answer to a specific question?
If you buy a PAYG from Tesco it will be on Orange, O2 etc. so rojash is quite correct and not complicating things.
You must have topped up your phone and have contact details of who you are buying airtime from surely?
yes if you other hand set is unblocked to every network sim card. Anyway, is your tesco phone within the warranty? If it is then you can send it back for them to fix it.