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Thinking of purchasing my first iPhone...

C

Captain Planet

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 24, 2007
588
0
Canada
Just to make things clear, I live in Canada. So I won't be talking about AT&T but rather Rogers, Bell and Telus.

So, I've never had a smartphone before... and I've been thinking about getting an iPhone pretty much since the first generation. Now, I know there's good chances that the 4th generation is coming this summer. So I won't go and buy one right now. Besides, I'm not rushed...

What I'm more concerned about is the amount of data that I would need on a monthly basis. As of now, those three companies I named all offer about the same "deals", or so I think. Now, they don't seem like very good deals to me... either it's the data plan or the combined plan. To give you guys an example, Rogers' data plans start at $25 for 500MB and up to $80 for 5GB. As for the combined plans (voice+data), you get 300 local minutes, unlimited weeknights from 9PM, 500MB and the choice of a feature like unlimited texts.

Now, if I compare to my regular cellphone, I'm paying around $55 with taxes. It might be higher when I do long distance calls, but usually it's the same. The only thing I have with that is my crappy plan and caller ID. Add those access fees and the rest.

For the minutes, I know I'd be fine. But for the data, I'm not sure 500MB would do. As for how much I want to actually spend, below $70 would be ideal.:rolleyes:

And I'm also not quite sure how that calculate your data usage. Like, they mention the number of web pages you visit per day or whatever... so is it like, I go on MacRumors, that's one. Then, I click on Forums (2). Click on a thread (3). Go back to the forum's page (4). Does that make sense?:confused: Also, I heard it can take up quite a lot of data to watch videos on YouTube...

So, I don't actually know the amount of pages I visit daily, or the exact number of emails I get... although usually it's not that much, so it would probably be the web browsing that would be most consuming. I'd like to know what you guys think and what kind of usage you can make out of your plans.

Sorry for the long post.:eek:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

With Orange in the UK, I get 500mb for £5 a month and use push email, contacts sync, calendar and I spend a lot of time browsing and I haven't gone over the 500mb so far. I also have RSS feeds and last.fm scrobbling all the time too which is a little addition to my data use.

On average I do around 300 to 400mb a month which suits me fine but if you wanted to stream or watch alot of video via your 3g connection you'd definately need more.

500mb is a considerable amount for browsing and if you have wifi at home, you wouldn't use any of your data at home which would be good.

I hope this is of some use.
 
Nothing to add but only in canada is caller ID a feature you pay extra for and there is a differentiation between long distance & local calls.
 
Yeah, Caller ID is usually an extra feature to pay for... but sometimes they'll include it in a plan as an option.

I suppose I wouldn't be streaming that many videos on the iPhone... mainly browsing. And at home, I'd probably rarely use it... and if I do, as you said, I'd be using WiFi.

About WiFi, if I'm in an area with WiFi available, will the iPhone automatically switch from the 3G network to WiFi? Or is that something I have to do manually?
 
The last two years rogers offered a 6gb plan for $30 during the iPhone launch months. It may come back, we will see.

Also, if you stay with whatever company you are currently with they will have a "retentions" department, sometimes called the cancellation department. You will be able to get much much better pricing then what is listed on the website through them. Go over to howard forums and have a look. http://howardforums.com/

They only work with current customers, the longer you have been with the company the better deal you can get.
 
My plan costs $55 strangely as well.

I get:

- 200 minutes
- Unlimited data
- 1000 texts

Works well for me. The unlimited data for $30/mo is hard to get, but if you look around you'll find out how. No tethering, though, so you'll have to do unofficial methods.
 
I visit this site, engadget, gizmodo, reddit, etc. and check email mainly in a edge area. Most of the time I'm on wifi but I don't know if it switches the data completely off when it is on wifi. Here is my data chart from at&t, it doesn't show later than Nov. 09 but I've checked and it's about the same. I don't know what happened in Jan. to cause such a spike. I wish at&t would offer a smaller data package but they are well aware of how much customers are using will milk the "unlimited" plan as long as possible.
Can you switch to the higher price plan if you start out with the lower one? I'm sure they would be more than happy to up your bill and if not, then you could keep the lower priced plan. If this is your first iPhone, then I would imagine that you will use more data at first than once you start using it.
 

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trainguy77 said:
The last two years rogers offered a 6gb plan for $30 during the iPhone launch months. It may come back, we will see.

Also, if you stay with whatever company you are currently with they will have a "retentions" department, sometimes called the cancellation department. You will be able to get much much better pricing then what is listed on the website through them. Go over to howard forums and have a look. http://howardforums.com/

They only work with current customers, the longer you have been with the company the better deal you can get.
Click to expand...

That's actually a good idea. I'm with Bell right now... been with them almost 4 years now. My contract actually finished 2 years ago... they tried to make me buy another one but I refused every time. I'll wait until there's a new launch of iPhone and I'll call them up to cancel. When I do, I'll see what they can offer to make me change my mind. I should of seriously thought of that before...
 
Doju said:
My plan costs $55 strangely as well.

I get:

- 200 minutes
- Unlimited data
- 1000 texts

Works well for me. The unlimited data for $30/mo is hard to get, but if you look around you'll find out how. No tethering, though, so you'll have to do unofficial methods.
Click to expand...

This sounds too good to be true. What carrier are you with? I have never heard of an unlimited that is officially compatible with the iPhone.

EDIT: OP, since your out of contract as well you have something to bargain with. Don't be afraid to push them either as they have a surprising amount of power. Here is a thread talking about bell retentions: http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1368604 it should give you an idea about what sort of plans are within their power.

EDIT2: as an example one user at howard forum got this:
350 Mins
UL Eve and Weekends at 6pm
Call Display
Message Center
UL Text
500mb Data

50.74 flat (Inclused Saf and taxes)
Click to expand...
 
dontworry said:
I visit this site, engadget, gizmodo, reddit, etc. and check email mainly in a edge area. Most of the time I'm on wifi but I don't know if it switches the data completely off when it is on wifi. Here is my data chart from at&t, it doesn't show later than Nov. 09 but I've checked and it's about the same. I don't know what happened in Jan. to cause such a spike. I wish at&t would offer a smaller data package but they are well aware of how much customers are using will milk the "unlimited" plan as long as possible.
Can you switch to the higher price plan if you start out with the lower one? I'm sure they would be more than happy to up your bill and if not, then you could keep the lower priced plan. If this is your first iPhone, then I would imagine that you will use more data at first than once you start using it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would go with the lowest plan to begin and see how much I really use... chances are they'd charge me to switch plans though. I'd have to check it out.
 
Wait till the new iPhone comes out and hopefully they'll bring back the 6gigs for 30 buck deal they brought when the 3GS and 3G came out, at least I think they did it for the 3GS as well.

If you can't wait, I'd personally go with fido man, trust me. They are the best company to get an iPhone with. There's a good reason for this. Fido is the only company I believe that bills you BY THE SECOND and not by the minute.

So 50 minutes from fido is as good as 100-150 anywhere else. I'd recommend the 20 dollar voice plan, plus 30 for 1gig, plus 7 for the caller ID for 57 plus tax and that's it. If you need more minutes and unlimited texting and all that, go for the 25 dollar plan, plus the 30 for 1 gig plus the 7 for caller ID.

Either way, I highly recommend Fido for an iPhone, you simply won't find a better deal for the money.

As for data, you can start with 500mb for $25, if you do very limited video watching, are mostly on wifi, and do regular site browsing, then 500 should be fine. I was mostly on wifi at home and whatnot, when I was out and about I didn't youtube it up, just browsed some sites, did wifi whenever possible, never hit 500mb. I just say 1 gig because it's nice to be able to be a little liberal.

As for switching plans, I don't believe any of the companies charge you to do so, but they do require you wait a certain amount of time, at least Bell does. I used to have a blackberry with bell and I had to wait a year to change my plan.

Also getting a retention plan with the iPhone is EXTREMELY rare if even possible at all, so don't count on that.
 
I'll definitely try to get a good deal from retention. I've got nothing to lose... but they do, so we'll see. Either way, I want an iPhone and I think I waited long enough... well I'm still waiting but it shouldn't be too long now.
 
trainguy77 said:
The last two years rogers offered a 6gb plan for $30 during the iPhone launch months. It may come back, we will see.

Also, if you stay with whatever company you are currently with they will have a "retentions" department, sometimes called the cancellation department. You will be able to get much much better pricing then what is listed on the website through them. Go over to howard forums and have a look. http://howardforums.com/

They only work with current customers, the longer you have been with the company the better deal you can get.
Click to expand...

6GB plan is back actually.. since a few weeks ago.
 
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