I did the same thing with my unlocked iPhone 6S Plus:
1. T-Mobile charged $15 for the SIM in the store and ~$72 for the first month (6GB Plan) = $87/total
2. Verizon charged ~$97 or so for the 3GB plan for the first month. (there was a $20 actiivation fee) so it would of been $77/month in theory.
3. ATT 3GB plan is $65/mo with employer discount.
VERIZON Experience using an unlocked iPhone 6S Plus (in Northern VA)
1. I noticed the LTE signal is nowhere near that of AT&T.
2. With AT&T typically you will have 3-5 bars everywhere you go (on LTE) (-82 to -102)
3. With Verizon, I found myself typically having 1-2 bars, sometimes 3, if I drove near a tower (within 100ft) I would get 4 bars.
4. If you use Verizon on LTE and you are on a call using VoLTE calling and you lose LTE signal and go down to 3g, it will drop because there is no handoff from LTE to 3G.
T-Mobile Experience using an unlocked iPhone 6S Plus (in Northern VA)
1. I could not hear party when I called (I tried to call out 2-3 times, nothing)- called again later 8-10+ minutes later and it worked, but this is not acceptable to me, not being able to make a phone call with 5 bars or -82dbm.
2. Robot voice/slow motion (experienced this once or twice)
3. Delayed text messages (some text messages - I did not receive until > 24 hours later)
4. FaceTime over cellular was not working correctly (other users reported this too) and they opened a case and said they would call me back in three days, 1-2 weeks later, I did not hear anything from them and the problem was not fixed. Basically FaceTime over cellular is unusable on iPhone and it is something I use regularly.
5. Visual voicemail stopped working (someone called and left a message earlier in the day) and on my iPhone is showed a red circle with no number in it. I rebooted the phone/etc, same issue. Visual voice mail was not available, it kept dialing to the voicemail telephone number to get the message that way.
After all of this, I was done. If folks can live with these issues or do not experience them, nice! The speed with T-Mobile was #1 bar-none, but basic functionality (and coverage for some in rural areas) is lacking.
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Speeds:
Here are some statistics in Northern Virginia for LTE only, speeds are in Mbps
Summary:
- ATT: Fairly reliable but does occasionally drop calls when driving and sometimes when stationary, extremely slow performance in Northern VA during peak hours.
- T-Mobile: Voice quality not as good as Verizon, great speed/performance, coverage an issue if not in a populated area.
- Verizon: Best voice quality, best network but throughout and network is horrible in buildings.
T-Mobile Download and Upload Average over 58 speedtests:
$ cat t | awk '{total += $6/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
28.0374
$ cat t | awk '{total += $8/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
14.2379
Verizon Download and Upload Average over 25 speedtests:
$ cat v | awk '{total += $6/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
18.1516
$ cat v | awk '{total += $8/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
8.46236
AT&T Download and Upload Average over 36 speedtests:
$ cat a | awk '{total += $6/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
12.5838
$ cat a | awk '{total += $8/1000; count++} END { print total/count }'
4.85458
++EDIT: calculations were /1000, forgot to update the text here
[doublepost=1455285525][/doublepost]I am highly interested to hear any other people who have an unlocked AT&T iPhone 6S/6S PLus and your experiences on other carriers (particularly Verizon, see this):
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unlocked-iphone-6s-on-verizon.1955984/
[doublepost=1455285866][/doublepost]
I own an unlocked iPhone 6s I purchased from AT&T that has been unlocked by AT&T. I've been looking at switching carriers to either Verizon or T-Mobile which seem to offer better calling packages.
Verizon has confirmed that the iPhone 6s's IMEI number works on their network. What I don't know is how well this works and wondered if anyone had any feedback if they've done this before. I would prefer not to have to sign-up and then find out it works but not very well.
T-Mobile from what I understand should work and they are offering a very good calling plan, at least for me, since I call Canada and México frequently. I don't know how well this works either since I believe AT&T's iPhone 6s does not have T-Mobiles extended frequency/network as if the phone was purchased from Apple or T-Mobile directly.
If anyone can help offer any suggestions, advise or their own experiences I'd be grateful. I really don't want to have to keep paying for "start-up" fees to be able to test and see which carrier works best with this phone. The data usage and speeds are not that much of an interest to me, I currently use less than 200mb per month now.
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Also why are you looking at switching carriers? What issues do you have with AT&T?
