a couple questions about the virgin mobile iPhone

[makleod]

I recently dropped my AT&T iPhone 4 in a puddle of water and now it's not working correctly. It's time to buy a new iPhone and I'm not exactly sure what to do. The Virgin Mobile iPhone seems like a great deal, but I am worried about the 3g speeds (I live in Sacramento, CA). Does anyone have any experience with the CDMA Virgin iPhone so far? My AT&T iPhone would only get 2mbps on average.

Also, I keep hearing you can't unlock the VM iPhone, but then I see this website:

http://virginmobile.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/155/~/unlocking-your-apple-iphone

Seems like they'll unlock it right away? Anyway, I'd really like to avoid paying $80 a month on the big three carriers. Open to suggestions...

 

[aziatiklover]

Virgin mobile USA will not unlock the iPhone. The website you posted is for Australia!

 

[makleod]

damnit! I didn't see a .au or .co.uk suffix, so I assumed it was USA. Oh well, still interested on hearing about Virgin Mobile 3g speeds (anyone in the Sacramento area)?

 

[Zaft]

damnit! I didn't see a .au or .co.uk suffix, so I assumed it was USA. Oh well, still interested on hearing about Virgin Mobile 3g speeds (anyone in the Sacramento area)?

I cant speak for the area your in, but in general CDMA will be slower then ATTs GSM network. So no matter what it will be slower for sure.

 

[Ugg]

I was a VM customer for five years and wanted an iPhone but decided to switch to Straight Talk instead.

I live in Chico and while I was satisfied with call quality, data speeds on my android phone were abysmal. I don't know if Sacramento would be any faster and I doubt it would make much difference on an iPhone.

An additional concern of mine was having the phone unlocked for use in Europe or Canada. I emailed VM and they replied to me that they won't unlock the phone, there are services that will do it but VM won't guarantee that they will work. That was a big turnoff for me. Why should I pay full price for an iPhone with no contract and have it permanently locked?

VM is $30 a month and ST is $45 so there isn't a huge difference in price but ATT's network is much larger. I liked VM but in the end, they just didn't measure up.