Why I am not buying iPhone5

International Student Day

I have been using iPhone 3Gs for the past 7 or so years, unlocked and jailbroken on U.S. T-Mobile network.

I would buy a $100 worth of prepaid credit and would get 1000 minutes for that. 1000 minutes would last me at least half a year, if not more.

Having traveled in countries where wireless data costs up to 5 times less than in U.S. (India, Russia, Lithuania), I do appreciate having data while I am on the road. Using iPhone 3Gs on 3G speed was great!

Data is T-Mobile's weak link in the U.S. because I can only get EDGE (2G) speeds in Santa Monica. Besides 2G being slow, T-Mobile is expensive for data as well - $50 per month for "unlimited data" which is at 2G speeds. So I am starting to fall out of love with T-Mo, and starting to look for something better.

For GSM in U.S. there are only T-Mobile and AT&T. Yes, there are some MVNO that ride on coattails of T-Mo but then you are still stuck at 2G. AT&T network has H2O where $100 buys you 2000 minutes (5c per minute) with 30c per megabyte for data. Validity is one year. So that might be my choice for my 3Gs when the credits with T-Mo expire.

Enter iPhone 5. People are abandoning ship of their perfectly good iPhone 4 and 4s to have the current ultimate status symbol - iPhone 5.

As we all know there will be iPhone 5s (or 6), 7, 8, 9... You know the story. But what was best last year, it is still good now, and for the next couple years.

Now is the time to pick old 4s up for a song - I just bought 64GB iPhone 4s for Verizon network for $400 shipped.

For my needs iPhone must be jailbroken and unlocked (then I can use it on either GSM (T-Mo or H20) or CMDA Verizon network). Sprint also has a 3G (and upcoming 4G) networks, but I have heard way more complains about Sprint than anyone else, so I crossed them off the list for my use.

Verizon network is one of the best networks in U.S., and it is one of the most expensive too. However, there are MVNO that use Verizon and are reasonably priced. My choice would be PagePlus Cellular.

As I am not using LTE iPhone 5, I don't need to pay for it. 3G is plenty fast for my use if needed, I usually get data through WiFi anyways.

So save the money and get a used iPhone 4 or 4s. It still has plenty of life left.