Use iphone without carrier?

Hello,
with the iPhone 5 just around the corner I was thinking I could take advantage of the guaranteed sell-off rush to purchase a used iPhone 4 in a few weeks. The thing is, I don't want to use the phone, I'll just be using it as a touch. I read this article (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3406) which says that I can do it, but it mentions requiring the original SIM card. But what if I don't have the original SIM card, or any SIM card for that matter? Am I out of luck?
Thanks

Considering that there are no used Verizon CDMA that have expired contracts as yet and their "full price" is $750 + at least 1 month plan to activate (>$800 total), that route doesn't make sense for a carrier free phone.
Also, it's not clear that the CDMA model can be activated without connection to a carrer. With the GSM models, you need a SIM, currently or previosuly activated for an iPhone to activate the phone, then remove the SIM. With the CDMA, there's no SIM to remove (or any equivalent setting) in order to disconnect from the carrier. The Apple support article doesn't mention using a CDMA model for this purpose.

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Oh man.
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Pretend for a second that the iPhone isn't the best thing since sliced bread and can do almost anything and pretend that some people might be happy setting it up and just using it without updating it's software all the time and just treating it like they've treated all their other phones - as a phone.
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gulfammullingar wrote:
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Use iphone without carrier?

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