iPad mini Should the iPad Mini replace my iPhone 5?

cutienoua · Nov 11, 2012

You can use iphone for voice only on att if you buy the phone outright,no contract.
Seeing that you have an iphone 5 and you did not pay in full,they will not let you use it without data.
only Tmobile bring your own they don't force you to get data.

aka777 · Nov 11, 2012

If apple could produce a device that is as big as the Samsung Note, I would buy it straight away.

Personally, I don't only use my thumb when using a device, so I do not agree with this point that apple constantly uses to rationalize their size. In addition, it's just too risky that you will drop your phone, when holding and operating it with one hand only.

One of the reasons the iphone 5 is such a hit is because of the bigger screen, which makes a huge difference to a users experience. A 5.5" cellular enabled iDevice would fit in anyone's pocket or handbag.

The key here is making devices that suit various peoples' individual needs. Unfortunately, apple has never been good at doing this; it's their way or nothing. This customization is after all why Microsoft did so well. Anyone who can capitalize this based on these next-gen devices will beat apple again, as it is their Achilles' heel

Awakener · Nov 11, 2012

aka777 said:
Not a chance.

Voip g711 is ISDN quality. Even Voip g729 is still double that of Tmobile, who has the clearest cell calls. AT&T actually halves the quality (compresses) of their 3G calls, to pump more through.

I also use Viber, which is G722 and that is HD voice. After using viber, a normal call on AT&T sounds awful.

----------

If apple could produce a device that is as big as the Samsung Note, I would buy it straight away.

Personally, I don't only use my thumb when using a device, so I do not agree with this point that apple constantly uses to rationalize their size. In addition, it's just too risky that you will drop your phone, when holding and operating it with one hand only.

One of the reasons the iphone 5 is such a hit is because of the bigger screen, which makes a huge difference to a users experience. A 5.5" cellular enabled iDevice would fit in anyone's pocket or handbag.

The key here is making devices that suit various peoples' individual needs. Unfortunately, apple has never been good at doing this; it's their way or nothing. This customization is after all why Microsoft did so well. Anyone who can capitalize this based on these next-gen devices will beat apple again, as it is their Achilles' heel

If Apple decided to make a 5.5" iPhone it would put the hurt on Samsung.

dinosaur1 · Nov 11, 2012

I currently have at&t for my cell phone provider. Can I go with Verizon for the iPad Mini data plan?

aka777 · Nov 12, 2012

dinosaur1 said:
I currently have at&t for my cell phone provider. Can I go with Verizon for the iPad Mini data plan?

Yes. Just select the verizon model.

MacIke · Nov 12, 2012

dinosaur1 said:
have a family plan with 5 lines. My line is the main one. I use at&t, but I hate their network. Can I use Verizon's data plan $30 for 3gb for the Mini and keep my at&t basic phone plan?

In my case I see more positives then negatives. If I have a basic phone I would have no contract(once my current one expires in April 2013), I have a ton more battery life on the Mini vs my 5, larger display which is easier on the eyes and I get to buy a new mini every year.

This is what I am doing. I have t-mobile basic plan with 5 lines. THe cost to move to an iPhone on verizon or att is so high, by about $90 more a month.

I can go with verizon with a mini for $40 and get all that i want and need. Comes to a savings of $600 a year. Or a new mini every year

dinosaur1 · Nov 12, 2012

MacIke said:
This is what I am doing. I have t-mobile basic plan with 5 lines. THe cost to move to an iPhone on verizon or att is so high, by about $90 more a month.

I can go with verizon with a mini for $40 and get all that i want and need. Comes to a savings of $600 a year. Or a new mini every year

Isn't at&t $30 month?

Harrycooke · Nov 12, 2012

Stop being basic. Get both. If I can afford it then anyone can. Then just use your iPhone to tether your iPad mini. Perfect.

cutienoua · Nov 12, 2012

my setup will be droid razr maxx and ipad mini verizon 5gb plan

hopefully iphone 5s will have enough juice to replace the razr!

ixodes · Nov 12, 2012

dinosaur1 said:
I am considering dumping my iPhone 5 and going with an iPad Mini 4G LTE. The fact that I use more data than voice calling and the 10 hour battery life on the Mini make it very appealing to me. I might use a dumb phone on the side or I may just use the iPad Mini for voip calls also.

I think that replacing ones iPhone with an iPad mini & a basic feature phone is a terrific idea. It would be great to eliminate the wasted time one spends typing messages on the iPhones tiny odd shaped display. Since it's obvious Apple values a tiny phone, there's no point in waiting for them to catch the competition. The mini is a perfect solution available now.

ohbrilliance · Nov 12, 2012

What would make this more compelling is if the LTE Mini could make cellular calls and send SMSs. Hardware-wise, what is the cellular iPad lacking for this to be possible?

bursthead · Nov 13, 2012

So this is my game plan right now. I have an ipad mini on the way and I went out and bought another iphone 5 from verizon. Sold off my old ATT unlimited plan and 4S.

In addition i recently purchased a unlimited verizon plan off ebay and its currently on the old 300 minute 34.99 + 29.99 unlimited data. Its about 64.99 after taxes with my discount. I'm a bit torn about putting my verizon sim in my ipad mini and letting my minute portion just waste. But after doing the numbers and looking at options. It might actually be feasible for me to put the verizon sim in my ipad. And take my Verizon iphone 5 which is gsm unlocked(i even tested it) and buy a 45 dollar straight talk sim (tax free in California). That would give me roughly unlimited data in my ipad, and I would have unlimited talk, text and 2gb (soft cap) on my phone. I would be back to using ATT's 4g network which is what I had been doing, so there wont be to much of a shock factor, but I will be limited on my data usage with the iphone. The total cost as I have been spending before I sold my ATT unlimited plan was (ATT voice+data)83 + 20 (Verizon 1gb plan)= 103 or my new proposed plan of 45(straight talk) + 64.99 (verizon voice+data) = 110. The only problem I see is that I will be using ATT again and I will have an iPhone 5 that is being underused. As I will not be utilizing Lte, but having the ability to switch between networks. There is some security with this as well as I need to have a verizon 4g LTE compatible phone for this to work with the ipad. If anything would happen with my ipad sim, it would be difficult getting it replaced without a phone.
http://www.straighttalk.com/

Or I could go with the ipad mini and dumb phone plan. Since I love the Verizon network I was thinking of getting an old iphone 4 or 4S from verizon. And have it flashed to run on Page plus which is offering for $29.95 a 1200 voice, 3000 voice and 200mb of data plan. And putting my number onto google voice, have my numbers forwarded from my verizon unlimited plan to my pageplus phone. So i could get away with 64.99+29.95. There are some risks to this as I have been hearing conflicting reports that the iphone is not supposed to be used on the network. And they randomly sweep the network and block iphones on pageplus.

https://www.pagepluscellular.com/online store/minutes.aspx

Or I could go with the barebones plan. Use my mini solely. Stay with the 64.99 plan and move everything to google voice. If I take a call I would use a VOIP service skype or whatever to make the call. And solely rely on the mini to do everything texting, email and browsing which would also be feasible since I already use imessage and google voice.

I want to put this out there for anyone looking to ditch the iphone 5 and still be cost effective. I'm still trying to figure this out as we speak. Some options I have been running are ditching the ipad mini and just jumping back into android with the Note 2. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy my tablet and phone needs. I have also been running through other scenarios with ditching the iphone 5 completely reverting back to an iphone 4s or S3 for Straight talk and the Page plus option.

AlvinNguyen · Nov 13, 2012

Woa woa woa! Slow down turbo. I think you're making this WAY too complicated for yourself.

This is actually what you need:

Straight talk $45 plan on the iPhone 5 (HSPA+ speed which is decent but not LTE)
iPad AT&T unlimited data plan $30/month truly unlimited (no throttling)

That will put you at $75 a month. I'm not sure why you are doing it your way which is complicated and silly to waste money.

I currently have a similar setup though on Verizon. I share a family plan with my GF and a couple others and we end up paying $50/ month for unlimited talk text and 2GB (per line) LTE.

I also have the unlimited iPad plan so that puts me at $80 a month for a normal working iPhone with unlimited talk / text / 2gb data and unlimited data LTE iPad!

I wish I could cancel out the phone but at $50/month it is way too good of a deal and too convenient to give up.

bursthead said:
So this is my game plan right now. I have anipad mini on the way and I went out and bought another iphone 5 from verizon. Sold off my old ATT unlimited plan and 4S.

In addition i recently purchased a unlimited verizon plan off ebay and its currently on the old 300 minute 34.99 + 29.99 unlimited data. Its about 64.99 after taxes with my discount. I'm a bit torn about putting my verizon sim in my ipad mini and letting my minute portion just waste. But after doing the numbers and looking at options. It might actually be feasible for me to put the verizon sim in my ipad. And take my Verizon iphone 5 which is gsm unlocked(i even tested it) and buy a 45 dollar straight talk sim (tax free in California). That would give me roughly unlimited data in my ipad, and I would have unlimited talk, text and 2gb (soft cap) on my phone. I would be back to using ATT's 4g network which is what I had been doing, so there wont be to much of a shock factor, but I will be limited on my data usage with the iphone. The total cost as I have been spending before I sold my ATT unlimited plan was (ATT voice+data)83 + 20 (Verizon 1gb plan)= 103 or my new proposed plan of 45(straight talk) + 64.99 (verizon voice+data) = 110. The only problem I see is that I will be using ATT again and I will have an iPhone 5 that is being underused. As I will not be utilizing Lte, but having the ability to switch between networks. There is some security with this as well as I need to have a verizon 4g LTE compatible phone for this to work with the ipad. If anything would happen with my ipad sim, it would be difficult getting it replaced without a phone.
http://www.straighttalk.com/

Or I could go with the ipad mini and dumb phone plan. Since I love the Verizon network I was thinking of getting an old iphone 4 or 4S from verizon. And have it flashed to run on Page plus which is offering for $29.95 a 1200 voice, 3000 voice and 200mb of data plan. And putting my number onto google voice, have my numbers forwarded from my verizon unlimited plan to my pageplus phone. So i could get away with 64.99+29.95. There are some risks to this as I have been hearing conflicting reports that the iphone is not supposed to be used on the network. And they randomly sweep the network and block iphones on pageplus.

https://www.pagepluscellular.com/online store/minutes.aspx

Or I could go with the barebones plan. Use my mini solely. Stay with the 64.99 plan and move everything to google voice. If I take a call I would use a VOIP service skype or whatever to make the call. And solely rely on the mini to do everything texting, email and browsing which would also be feasible since I already use imessage and google voice.

I want to put this out there for anyone looking to ditch the iphone 5 and still be cost effective. I'm still trying to figure this out as we speak. Some options I have been running are ditching the ipad mini and just jumping back into android with the Note 2. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy my tablet and phone needs. I have also been running through other scenarios with ditching the iphone 5 completely reverting back to an iphone 4s or S3 for Straight talk and the Page plus option.

bursthead · Nov 13, 2012

Actually your making it out to be simpler than it is. I already purchased the Verizon unlimited plan (not throttled) with 1 year contract, so that 64 dollars is a fixed cost. I will not spend 800 dollars for ATT unlimited iPad sim. So that is not an option for me. I will make the sacrifice, so I can save money by using straight talk (att network), but that will be as far as I go. Where I live Verizon is still the best the network.

AlvinNguyen said:
Woa woa woa! Slow down turbo. I think you're making this WAY too complicated for yourself.

This is actually what you need:

Straight talk $45 plan on the iPhone 5 (HSPA+ speed which is decent but not LTE)
iPad AT&T unlimited data plan $30/month truest unlimited (no throttling)

That will put you at $75 a month. I'm not sure why you are doing it your way which is complicated and silly to waste money.

I currently have a similar setup though on Verizon. I share a family plan with my GF and a couple others and we end up paying $50/ month for unlimited talk text and 2GB (per line) LTE.

I also have the unlimited iPad plan so that puts me at $80 a month for a normal working iPhone and unlimited LTE iPad!

I wish I could cancel out the phone but at $50/month it is way too good of a deal and too convenient to give up.

AlvinNguyen · Nov 13, 2012

bursthead said:
Actually your making it out to be simpler than it is. I already purchased the Verizon unlimited plan (not throttled) with 1 year contract, so that 64 dollars is a fixed cost. I will not spend 800 dollars for ATT unlimited iPad sim. So that is not an option for me. I will make the sacrifice, so I can save money by using straight talk (att network), but that will be as far as I go. Where I live Verizon is still the best the network.

At $110 a month you're looking at $1320 for the year. At $103 a month it's $1236.

If you go with my setup it'll be $75 x 12 = $900.

So essentially you're saving $330 to $420 a year if you go with my setup. You sold your AT&T account and bought the Verizon one right? So why not sell the Verizon account? Plus the AT&T iPad unlimited plan isn't $800 - more like $400-$600 at most.

Anyways that's fine, your money, not mine

If you are still stuck on the idea of Verizon iPad unlimited I suggest another alternative that's still better than yours:

Change the phone line on Verizon account to the cheapest $9.99 + $29.99 for data = $40

Use straight talk for another $45 = $85

If you're REALLY ballsy and want to save even more. Then don't get straight talk and get the Line2 app (they give you a number or you can port your number to them) and then it's $10/month unlimited minutes / texts - you use it like a real phone but you have to have data (no problem since you for Verizon unlimited). Whenever you need to go somewhere and don't want to bring the iPad just pop out the sim and put it in your iPhone

If you go with Line2 then it's just your Verizon plan $40 and $10 for line2 = $50.

The only side effect to this is that you won't even need your iPhone except for whenever you don't want to take the iPad with you.

bursthead · Nov 13, 2012

I'm really fed up with ATT, so for me anything related on ATT is a waste of time. If your enjoying the ATT Lte on your ipad more power to you. I just can't do it anymore.

I don't know where you found the 9.99 voice line plan? The only way I could see that being possible was if I was on a family plan and added a line. Which I do not have and would cost me 35 dollars to just upgrade my main line (lowest family share is 69.99). Then tack on an additional 9.99 for the additional line. That makes it 79.98+29.99 and I already hit my 110 mark and I can't even text.

Though your idea of using Line2 does sound appealing. And I may go that route if it proves to be more reliable than using Google Voice.

AlvinNguyen said:
At $110 a month you're looking at $1320 for the year. At $103 a month it's $1236.

If you go with my setup it'll be $75 x 12 = $900.

So essentially you're saving $330 to $420 a year if you go with my setup. You sold your AT&T account and bought the Verizon one right? So why not sell the Verizon account? Plus the AT&T iPad unlimited plan isn't $800 - more like $400-$600 at most.

Anyways that's fine, your money, not mine

If you are still stuck on the idea of Verizon iPad unlimited I suggest another alternative that's still better than yours:

Change the phone line on Verizon account to the cheapest $9.99 + $29.99 for data = $40

Use straight talk for another $45 = $85

If you're REALLY ballsy and want to save even more. Then don't get straight talk and get the Line2 app (they give you a number or you can port your number to them) and then it's $10/month unlimited minutes / texts - you use it like a real phone but you have to have data (no problem since you for Verizon unlimited). Whenever you need to go somewhere and don't want to bring the iPad just pop out the sim and put it in your iPhone

AlvinNguyen · Nov 13, 2012

How you feel abut AT&T is how I feel about sprint so I understand your position completely. I'd rather shoot myself than give Sprint anymore money haha.

As for the $9.99 option I believe all you do is call them and say you want the cheapest voice plan possible as you will be using the sim in an iPad (they allow sim swapping so that's no problem there). They should be able to give you a 9.99 basic phone plan because when I was trying to by unlimited on Verizon for an iPad that's what I was told. Ultimately I went with AT&T because I like the truly unlimited factor and I already have my phones through Verizon so it's nice to have dual carriers.

Anyways, keep us all posted. If you can do the Verizon + line2 and you're ok with the inconveniences it might be something that myself or others might want to do

bursthead said:
I'm really fed up with ATT, so for me anything related on ATT is a waste of time. If your enjoying the ATT Lte on your ipad more power to you. I just can't do it anymore.

I don't know where you found the 9.99 voice line plan? The only way I could see that being possible was if I was on a family plan and added a line. Which I do not have and would cost me 35 dollars to just upgrade my main line (lowest family share is 69.99). Then tack on an additional 9.99 for the additional line. That makes it 79.98+29.99 and I already hit my 110 mark and I can't even text.

Though your idea of using Line2 does sound appealing. And I may go that route if it proves to be more reliable than using Google Voice.

dinosaur1 · Nov 13, 2012

I currently have at&t and I'm grandfathered on the unlimited data plan which I'm using on my iphone 5. I'll be selling my iphone 5 so I can buy an ipad mini 4G for voice and data. Can I keep my unlimited data plan still and just swap my sim? Since I already use google voice J might just port my number over to them. Does anyone know how much data GV uses for inbound and outbound calls? Just in case if I have to go with a 3GB plan.

AlvinNguyen · Nov 13, 2012

dinosaur1 said:
I currently have at&t and I'm grandfathered on the unlimited data plan which I'm using on my iphone 5. I'll be selling my iphone 5 so I can buy an ipad mini 4G for voice and data. Can I keep my unlimited data plan still and just swap my sim? Since I already use google voice J might just port my number over to them. Does anyone know how much data GV uses for inbound and outbound calls? Just in case if I have to go with a 3GB plan.

No, only Verizon allow sim swapping - AT&T will get you and cancel your unlimited plan / account. They will suspend the line and when you call in to reactivate it you'll lose your unlimited.

cutienoua · Nov 13, 2012

wow att is really at it!
what if he gets the note2 that should be ok

bursthead · Nov 14, 2012

cutienoua said:
wow att is really at it!
what if he gets the note2 that should be ok

i think the most viable solution is the note 2. As that is the largest phone that ATT allows voice, sms and data on. I had tried modding my old galaxy tab 7 with voice features and got a notice from ATT along with an account disable within 2 hours. You still will not be able to swap sims, though i'm not sure if ATT is still enforcing it since they have moved to the throttling. If people want to cite the people who lost there unlimited by switching sims with the ipad 2. You can argue that was during the time when they had not set up a throttling limit on users. So it may be possible to get away with it now, though I only tried it for a few hrs at a time and it was between an ATT iphone unlimited data plan and verizon ipad.

iPad mini Should the iPad Mini replace my iPhone 5?

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