getting iphone, which tmobile plan to get?

[slag]

whats the best iphone site out there for noob iphone questions such as carrier, plan type, etc?

I am going to go with Tmobile, however, I dont know which plan to get or how to get the $5.99 internet access. Every time I go on their site to pick a plan, i have to choose a phone also.

In addition, do all plans require a 2 yr contract?

 

[pm]

The best place that I know of for this stuff is the Howardforums.
Their T-Mobile wiki is pretty good and up-to-date.
http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.php/T-Mobile

There's a fairly active discussion on T-Mobile on iPhone here:
http://www.howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=468

It's highly unlikely that you will be able to sign up for the $6 internet plan. The plan was phased out around Nov. 20th, 2008. Existing users have been grandfathered in and can keep it (so far anyway). But they haven't allowed new users sign up since mid-Nov. Besides which, the $6 plan was never intended for non-WAP access. They replaced it with their $20/month "unlimited web" plan. And within a month or two they then raised rates on that plan to $25 to match the G1 data plan by adding $5 and including text messaging.
http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.php/T-Mobile_Data

You shouldn't need to sign up for a 2 year contract - you are not buying a discounted phone from them - but they go out of their way to make it hard to do this. In my experience they will always attempt to sign you up for a two year commitment, but will eliminate this if you make it clear you are not happy.

 

[slag]

exactly what i was looking for.. thanks so much for posting that reply

 

[pm]

You are welcome. Glad I can help.

To get set up, you'll need to either call or go to a T-Mobile store. If you talk to a friendly rep, you can probably ask to get onto the "total mobile internet" plan for $20/month which might make more sense than the $25 plan including messages if you never send SMS text messages. You might be able to get on a limited "web2go" plan for $10-20/month that will get you 50MB or 100MB per month. But be warned, that 50MB is not a lot for an iPhone. They are very data hungry. I typically use about 90-110MB/month. Talk to the rep and see what they can do for you... if they are nice and you are persuasive, you can sometimes get them to resurrect an old plan and put you on it.

In my personal experience as an iPhone-on-T-mobile user, they are generally really happy to see us. In fact, if you have any issues getting your iPhone working on T-Mobile, they have a bunch of very knowledgeable CSR iPhone guys who will help you get it working.

 

[Rottie]

iphone or iphone 3g? Tmobile does not have 3g yet...am I wrong? In the past I always wanted iphone or iphone 3g but my friends told me not to get those because they do not have cut and paste feature...I always use cut and paste feature all the time from text message to website or to email, etc.

 

[pm]

T-Mobile has 3G, it's just the most limited coverage of the four main carriers, and the frequency space that they are using make it's 3G network incompatible with pretty every 3G phone out there (with literally a handful of exceptions)..

Both the iPhone and iPhone 3G work on T-Mobile, but the 3G capabilities of the iPhone 3G don't work so the phone just works on the slower 2G EDGE network.

Cut 'n Paste capability will be released on the iPhone sometime over the summer. Probably late June, or July. They did a nice job with the way they are implementing it... but this feature should have been there all along.

 

[Rottie]

new iphone means expensive while iphone 3g price might be lower. sigh i might go with bold or storm until new iphone price go lower next year

 

[Shlong]

You used to be able to get the T-Zones plan for $5 a month or so and just change the apn on the iphone to epc.tmobile.com for Unlimited Internet. T-Mobile changed that though around 6 months ago, so now you have to get on the $20, $25, or $35 plans.

 

[gorcorps]

Is it unlocked already? You said it's jailbroken but jailbreaking is not the same thing as unlocking.

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
Is it unlocked already? You said it's jailbroken but jailbreaking is not the same thing as unlocking.

I was going to get one jailbroken and unlocked but found my brother in law wanted to sell his pristine 2g one to get a 3g, so, i paid him $200.00, and i got the phone, nice carrier, belt clip carrier, dock, cables, box, etc.

I ended up jailbreaking and unlocking it myself. Couldnt do it with quickpwn--it said it was broken and unlocked, but never really unlocked, so I ended up loading a custom jailbroken and unlocked firmware to the phone and that worked.

Activated it at a tmobile store in my town last night and got the 50 mb web/200 message plan for $9.99 along with $39.99 1000 minutes plan. I'm going to have to upgrade the data plan I think, however, there is rumor of a new plan coming out on the 3rd so if I can wait until then, I'm golden.

So far, very happy with it. I did have to change the apn but it was painless and worked great with the 9.99 data plan i got. I'm pre paying also so there is no contract.

 

[QueBert]

I have T-Mobile, I went with a FlexPay plan, basically the same price as a regular plan, without a contract. The difference is you either need your own phone, or you need to buy one from them at full retail. I already had a GSM so it wasn't a big deal. I love not being tied into a 1 or 2 year, and not having to pay pre-paid rates. You can add data and texting (I don't have either) I get 300 any time minutes, night and weekends and My Fav 5 and it's $47 a month after taxes. You can get it for $10 less a month if you don't want the Fav 5's.

 

[pm]

Congrats, Slag. Welcome to the iPhone@T-Mo club! There aren't that many of us.

You may want to download SBSettings from Cydia. It adds a really handy one swipe access to things like WiFi and Bluetooth, but more importantly it gives you the ability to turn EDGE on and off, which will help make it a bit easier to stay under the 50MB cap.

When I travel I tend to use the SBSettings EDGE on/off capability a lot since in most countries, prepaid SIMs pay per the MB.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: pm
Congrats, Slag. Welcome to the iPhone@T-Mo club! There aren't that many of us.

You may want to download SBSettings from Cydia. It adds a really handy one swipe access to things like WiFi and Bluetooth, but more importantly it gives you the ability to turn EDGE on and off, which will help make it a bit easier to stay under the 50MB cap.

When I travel I tend to use the SBSettings EDGE on/off capability a lot since in most countries, prepaid SIMs pay per the MB.

I'm not sure if it's just me, my phone, or the fact that I'm on AT&T, but the EDGE on/off feature of SBSettings doesn't seem to do anything for me. It still stays connected to edge regardless of it being turned on or off. However I do have an unlimited data plan so it doesn't matter. Just thought I'd add my own experience.

Everything else works fine though.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
I'm not sure if it's just me, my phone, or the fact that I'm on AT&T, but the EDGE on/off feature of SBSettings doesn't seem to do anything for me. It still stays connected to edge regardless of it being turned on or off. However I do have an unlimited data plan so it doesn't matter. Just thought I'd add my own experience.

Everything else works fine though.

Hmmm. Definitely works for me. I can see my EDGE Data IP address switch from a number to N/A, and then I get errors on all data requests. This happened last month when I was in Germany and Poland too... turning off EDGE using SBSettings definitely disabled all data. I wonder if it's an APN settings thing - like they are blanking out the APN text or something, and because AT&T's APN carrier settings are integrated, the SBSettings change doesn't affect it.