Hacker News Reader

Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

Add the $450 extra you pay for the unlocked iphone and it's closer to $90 a month. I pay $55-60 a month for AT&T (including a $12 discount thru my employer).

Don't get me wrong AT&T sucks and T-Mobile is doing a lot of consumer friendly things but the gap betewen them simply isn't as large as is being presented.

View on HN

Yes, but after 2 years and you've paid off the phone, that extra $30 or so comes off your bill (quite nice).With ATT, even after your contract expires, you're still paying that extra money for the subsidized phone.

Carriers are already moving to discount fully paid phones. AT&T hasn't done it yet but Verizon is and AT&T is likely to follow.

So that's half the problem - the other half is the locked handsets. With TMobile, you pay for unlocked you get a fully unlocked handset. If you are on the TMO installment plan, your phone is locked until you pay up, at which point they unlock it - no 2 years required.

After 40 days they are willing to unlock it too, you don't have to pay it off entirely...

Last I heard (6 months ago), AT&T makes you wait till your contract is up before unlocking, and on the other side Verizon won't let you bring your unlocked phone to their service - forcing you to buy one from them.

AT&T hasn't unlocked any of my iPhone's... and still won't even after my contract with them was ended in good standing.

I was able to use their unlock portal to request and receive unlocks for all of my iPhones (3G, 4, 4S) after my contract was up.

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/

After how many years of pocketing the extra money? I feel like T-Mobile is truly disrupting the industry, and I'm voting with my wallet to support them. I can't wait until the other carriers actually start competing with T-Mobile, instead of just playing catch up. I hope that's when the industry actually becomes consumer-friendly, instead of hostile.

I'm paying $50/month for unlimited voice/text and 2.5GB of 4G data before I drop to 2G speeds. Is that what AT&T offers for the same price? Also, I run on a Nexus 5 (half the price of an unlocked iPhone 5s).

I'm not an encyclopedia of AT&T offerings but...

The Nexus 5 is more comparable to the iPhone 5C which AT&T offers for $199 on contract (let's compare 32GB models since Google only charges $50 vs Apple's $100 for the upgrade). At $399 the extra $200 works out to $8 more a month. This is about what I pay monthly to AT&T including fees.

Like I said T-Mobile does a lot of great consumer things. For some people it will be worth it to go with T-Mobile. For others the difference isn't quite so large and in many places the T-Mobile network simply isn't good enough[1].

[1] http://opensignal.com/network-coverage-maps/t-mobile-coverag...

I highly disagree that the N5 is more comparable to the 5C than the 5S [1]. It matches or beats the 5S on almost every single spec.

1. http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Google-Nexus-5,Appl...

The consensus opinion of professional reviews is that the 5s is superior. The Nexus beats the 5s on display but lags the 5s in battery life, camera and build quality. CPU/GPU are comparable. We could continue to list minor features in each phones favor all day but those are the major specs most people care about. If you look at reviews across the board the 5s is a better reviewed phone and the Nexus 5 receives marks around the 5c. Vs the 5c it wins on display and CPU/GPU but loses on battery life, camera and build. It may be better than the 5c but I think it's a closer comparison.

Steko - I think toomuchtodo is asking if you get unlimited voice/text and a comparable amount of data for that amount of money with AT&T.

And I think my exact point was that is an Apples to oranges comparison. The whole point of the subsidy is you pay more per month and less up front. The whole point of a shitty network is that it doesn't cost as much to maintain.

I'm not talking about subsidies or networks. Just if we're talking about a comparable plan. Comparing an unlimited text/voice plan on TMo to a 500 min plan on AT&T doesn't make for an accurate comparison. You may not like TMo for your purposes, but for most people it works just fine.

Where I live T-Mobile is just as good as AT&T. OTOH I know people in large cities that can't get TM at their house. I'm not a T-Mobile hater, but I think it's important to realize that T-Mobile is not the promised land. There are important reasons why T-Mobile is in 4th place and has been hemorrhaging subscribers. And while it's going to be the best carrier for some people, many others are going to have a bad time.

It's not what AT&T offers for the same price. Before I switched to Tmo two months ago, my wife and I had AT&T. Probably the same 23% corporate discount. 500Mb plan for her, grandfathered unlimited data for me, no text plan (Google Voice or iMessage), 700 minutes/month split between the two of us. Total bill (taxes, etc.): $121/month with discount.

Tmo: unlimited everything (well, 5GB of 4G data) with no discount, $140/month. I'll probably knock that to 2.5GB (we don't use that much) and bring it on par with what we paid on AT&T. Additionally, though not directly related to the comparison, we don't have to say "Mother, may I?" for tethering, so we can knock off another $30/month for iPad data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com