If more data is more important to you than more coverage, the Magenta plan offers a great price for unlimited data on a strong network. Plus, T-Mobile has the best 5G service and international plans. You must call Consumer Cellular to get a four-line plan, though, because the website allows only up to three lines. We limited this guide to the most widely used national options—starting with the three biggest nationwide carriers and their prepaid services and subsidiaries, and then adding services that have ranked high in surveys from sites such as PCMag , the American Customer Satisfaction Index , and J.
We also chose to exclude contenders available only in parts of the US. That meant dismissing the regional carrier U. Cellular and the resold services of cable firms such as Comcast and Spectrum, which require subscriptions to their residential broadband to get their advertised pricing.
We also cut prepaid services that required separate purchases of data, texts, or voice minutes to meet any of our monthly usage quotas. For each, we computed the cost of a few typical bundles of smartphone service, setting minimal use at 1 GB of data, moderate use at 5 GB, and heavy use at 15 GB. One gigabyte a month is enough for simple emailing, web browsing, and navigation with Google Maps or Apple Maps, while 5 GB should cover frequent social media use and 15 GB is for folks who regularly play games and stream video.
Those data amounts are based on figures from the fourth quarter of , when the market-research firm NPD Group found that US smartphone owners averaged 9. The coronavirus pandemic and its resulting lockdowns have probably forced that number down as more people have stayed at home, but life beyond Wi-Fi will resume at some point and already has in some areas.
We assumed 1, voice minutes and text or multimedia messages used per month, based on usage data from the wireless-industry group CTIA. Some prepaid and resold services limit text messages and phone calls, so the cost of one may be slightly more or less if you use more or fewer texts and minutes, respectively. If a plan offered a lower rate for enabling autopay or paying for a year in advance, or included loyalty discounts that cut your bill over time a new feature at Boost Mobile and Verizon Prepaid as of summer , we factored in those options.
We did not, however, count deals that excluded existing customers or required trading in a phone or porting over a number. This Verizon 5 GB plan includes full-speed mobile hotspot and allows HD streaming video, albeit capped at p resolution on phones and p on tablets.
For this plan, Verizon offers discounts to employees and members of designated companies and organizations; only its military and veterans discount applies to unlimited plans.
Verizon has historically taken a long time to push out software updates for the Android phones it sells, and its Android 9 and Android 10 updates still lag behind those of T-Mobile. But Verizon sells phones unlocked although last June, carriers received permission from the Federal Communications Commission to lock them for 60 days after activation to thwart fraud , so you can and should save money by using a local prepaid SIM when traveling internationally.
And T-Mobile offers a wider choice of phones and delivers much better international-roaming options. The research firm RootMetrics, which does automated testing while driving around the country, gives T-Mobile lagging grades for voice and text use but also shows T-Mobile at a respectable and close third place for speed and data—especially in urban areas.
After the cap, T-Mobile slows hotspot connections to 3G speeds. Opensignal found in June that T-Mobile 5G customers connected to that signal And it includes an hour of free Gogo inflight Wi-Fi for every flight on compatible aircraft.
Due to constantly shifting promotions and terms, family-plan pricing is difficult to sort through, but one service has a clear advantage in our typical usage scenario of 5 GB per month per device: Consumer Cellular.
Most important, it offers US-based phone support and step-by-step manuals and video tutorials for the non-tech savvy, maintains an in-store presence in major retailers such as Target, and offers installment-plan purchase options with roughly the same terms as the majors provide. Consumer Cellular blocks mobile-hotspot use by default but enables that feature if you ask. And you pay up front for either three, six, or 12 months—the longer the package, the better the price per month.
Here you get 5 GB a month allowed for hotspot use, after which your tethered devices lose access to that shared Mint bandwidth. All of the major carriers have followed suit, offering similar leasing plans. In the chart below, I examined the true cost of purchasing versus leasing an iPhone. In order to estimate these costs, I had to make several assumptions.
Secondly I am assuming that you are reselling your year-old iPhone on eBay. If you decide to upgrade your iPhone every two years, the savings are even more significant. But even with the new pricing, is it worth it to upgrade each year?
The chart below analyzes the difference between buying an iPhone every year versus buying one every two years. In the projections below, I am assuming that you are buying a new 64 GB iPhone each time and that you are reselling your old iPhone on eBay.
That being said, you are of course buying twice the number of iPhones. With all of the carriers changing their pricing models, keeping track of the latest offerings can be pretty confusing. The first chart assumes that you are on an individual plan, are purchasing a 64 GB iPhone 6s, and that you require at least 2 GB of data.
Rates below exclude the cost of a new iPhone but include monthly access charges. As a benefit of this, the dreaded ETFs early termination fees of yesterday are gone -- but you're still on the hook for paying off the hardware before you switch see no.
So, if you need to be able to switch carriers at a moment's notice, you may want to scrape together the full retail amount and buy the phone in full. If the new carrier doesn't work out and you do bolt, keep in mind that you usually get a day grace period for major problems, like if the phone hardware or network coverage don't pan out.
This is the most important, so listen up. The fanciest phone on the market won't get you anywhere if you can't get data or voice service. Ask your friends, colleagues and neighbors how good their reception and signal strength are where you work and live.
Network strength is so incredibly variable, and can change by time of day, weather and even where you are inside or outside a building. It changes, too, since carriers upgrade their networks or adjust their towers all the time.
Because of that, we can't recommend a single carrier that's guaranteed to work for you, but a lot of people turn to RootMetrics , which is an independent company that routinely tests network strength across the US. A few years ago, we joined RootMetrics for a ride-along to see exactly how data-testing worked.
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