Plan vs. prepaid for iPhone?

You need to be a little careful here with the iPhone, because if you get an iPhone on a pre-paid plan, then it is the difference between getting the GSM version of the phone and the CDMA version of the phone.

So if you go for a provider such as T-Mobile with their sim card, you would need to get a GSM phone and also, if you were to sign a 2 year contract, with a company such as AT&T, then you are looking at getting a GSM phone too.

If you were to stay with Verizon and get an iPhone through them, then you would need to get the Verizon phone via the Apple store directly or go to Verizon themselves and buy one of their phones and once you do, that is it. The Verizon phone is a CDMA phone, but does come with an unlocked sim card tray so that you can use the phone for travelling, so if you were to visit say Europe, you can put in any local sim card into the sim tray and your phone will work there and pick up the local gsm networks. Once you returned to the US, then you take the sim card out and go back to using Verizon.

If you get the phone on Verizon, what you need to realise is that you can then never use that phone on another network in the US - you need to stick with Verizon, or you will need to get a new phone if you ever want to use T-Mobile or AT&T, as they are GSM providers.

Ocean 17 wrote:

I know my current provider, Verizon, is very good, but even the most modest plan for the iPhone is at $120 per month if you include the fees.

This sounds completely wrong. Maybe the first month comes to a price like this, but it has start-up costs. I strongly suggest talking to someone from Verizon and learning about their on-contract pricing.

UPDATE - Of course, I assume you are talking about one iPhone for one person on the contract.

Message was edited by: sberman

In my experience and for my usage, buying the iPhone outright (direct from Apple) and then getting a SIM-only contract or pre-paid plan is much cheaper.

For instance, here in the UK, I pay £7.50 ($12.25) a month for 400 minutes, 5000 SMS and 500mb data.

I don't know if it is possible to get such deals in the US.

Is it still not cheaper to buy the iPhone outright though, than sign up for a costly monthly, subsidised plan? In my experience you always end up paying over the odds for the phone when it is included in the monthly costs.

Probably not, because if you sign up for a 2 year contract with AT&T, then the phone itself is quite heavily subsidised.