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Question from my son

R

RodgerBrooks

Newbie
My son has an iphone 4 with AT&T but is interested in moving to prepaid. is it possible to move his current iphone from AT&T to Virgin Mobile?
 
No, AT&T uses the gsm network, while Virgin Mobile is a cdma network. He may be able to use it on the T-Mobile prepaid plans. He would need to have it unlocked and make sure it supports the proper frequencies for T-Mobile.
 
You can't use an iPhone from one network on another network even if sim unlocked. Not within the US anyway. They have locked that all down pretty hard.
 
Then I'm sure he will be leaving his iPhone behind and moving to something else. He is moving to prepaid something or another but won't pay virgin the price they want for another iphone. like everyone these days he's looking to save money and at&t is not very good for that. I know virgin has other good phones as well as other carriers on prepaid so he will be looking around.
 
well if he wants speed on 4g its gonna be the evo 4g and the triumph thats 3g. those are the only phones whith enough. power. altough triumph has 2.2 froyo and evo has 4.0 ice cream sandwhich.
 
The HTC One V is an excellent device and very easy to root. I've had mine for almost a month now, I rooted it the day after I bought it. If you don't mind HTC's Sense UI, it is even very smooth on stock. 3.7" superLCD2 screen at 480x800 with 252 ppi, very crisp and clean display. 1ghz processor, 1gig user available memory for apps, Ice Cream Sandwich, supports up to 32 gig micro sd card. It is only 3g, but since I don't have Wimax in my area, that's fine. Retailing at $200, but you may still be to find it for 20% off if you shop around. Believe me, it's worth every penny.
 
right now he is looking at virgin mobile but he is also looking at boost mobile, metropcs and t-mobile monthly 4g. in our area all are pretty strong.
 
RodgerBrooks said:
right now he is looking at virgin mobile but he is also looking at boost mobile, metropcs and t-mobile monthly 4g. in our area all are pretty strong.
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Having spent a few years on VM USA, Id strongly recommend T-Mobile. Especially if it's pretty strong in your area... T-Mobile is extremely solid for me and I like that I can walk right in to a physical T-Mobile store and get help when I need it. VM USA phone support is terrible and you can barely understand their English.
 
odds are he knows people with vm,metropcs and t mobile phones so i will just have them come over so he can see what type of service he gets with them.if they are about the same signal strength and data speeds imo vm is the best deal.

in my experience with those carriers i get the best signal strength with metropcs anywhere between -49 dbm-60 dbm in my living room with vm a close second at -55dbm-65dbm.t mobile is a distant third at -89dbm -97dbm.

the main reason im done with vm is for whatever reason my data speeds died where im at and 4g is closer to edge speeds now.the sad part is just 6 blocks away my 4g speeds are usually 10k plus on speedtests but here im lucky to break 100kbps.
 
He is talking to others he knows that are with various carriers. we are in the detroit metro area suburbs so all carriers have strong voice and most have strong data. Sprint networks and all who use them have a bit less of a strong data part of things. And according to an article I read this morning on phonearena tmo is going to open up pre paid for unlocked iphones so he may try that. I don't know if he knows anything about unlocking or not. I sent him the article to read. But of course he is considering everything right now... he just wants to get away from the expensive AT&T and he does not want to move to any other post paid... he is looking strictly at pre paid now.
 
Sprint looks to be pretty bad in Detroit. Looking at a PC Mag review of mobile networks from earlier this year, Spring had 3G speeds above 144kbps only 29% of the time in Detroit. This compares to AT&T beating 144 kbps 91% of the time and T-Mobile beating 144 kbps 99% of the time. Sprint/Virgin Mobile looks to be a poor choice in Detroit and T-Mobile seems to be a very strong option.
 
Yea you can get him a T-Mobile pre-paid. You have to cut the T-mobile's SIM card so that it's smaller and fits into the MicroSIM card in the iPhone. There are videos of it on YouTube.
 
True, but with Straight Talk you don't need to cut a sim card and the at&t iphone itself reputedly doesn't even need to be unlocked.

I have no firsthand or even secondhand experience with any of this, though.
 
zenicanin said:
Interesting. First time I heard that. I wonder why T-Mo isn't getting the iPhones officially. If VM and Cricket can get it, there's no reason T-Mo can't. They're just losing more and more customers. I'm surprised they even got the S3.
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Apple isn't interested in adding the 1700mhz band that T-Mobile needs to have 3G/4G work. I don't think Sprint would have gotten the iPhone, either, except they made a CDMA version for Verizon, the largest US carrier, and Sprint could use the same phone. Even so, they made Sprint sign a huge contract in order to get the iPhone.
 
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