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Buy my iphone4 at Apple store or Wireless store?

G

GMan821

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 14, 2011
3
0
My contract with ATT is up in a few weeks and I've decided to go with Verizon and get the iphone4. My question is, is there any advantage to buying the phone at the apple store or should I just get it at the Verizon store? Any thoughts?
 
GMan821 said:
My contract with ATT is up in a few weeks and I've decided to go with Verizon and get the iphone4. My question is, is there any advantage to buying the phone at the apple store or should I just get it at the Verizon store? Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

If you buying the phone outright, with no contract, apple would be the only place to get it. I think you should get it at the verizon store so you can get a nice contract with a verizon rep
 
I'd buy at the Apple Store. It's just so much easier with repairs, and replacements if needed. Plus, the people in the Apple Stores are less obnoxious than Verizon employees.
 
I'd buy from the wireless store. I bought mine from the ATT store and I got some good discounts. Apple can't really give you any discounts.
 
DaBlackMamba said:
I'd buy from the wireless store. I bought mine from the ATT store and I got some good discounts. Apple can't really give you any discounts.
Click to expand...

This. Apple is textbook while the wireless store might be able to credit you the activation fee, give you a free accessory, etc.
 
Whats your reason for going with an iphone 4 over waiting for the new iphone? I ask this as I am in the same position my contract ends in july and well I need a new phone. I can wait but at the same time I dont think the new iphone is going to be anything worth getting over an iphone 4.
 
Good choice going with Verizon, insane speed and service.

I had an iPhone 4 on AT&T and a 4 on Verizon. The test went something like this.

AT&T:

Full Bars
4.3 mbps down
300 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Verizon:

Full Bars
.80 mbps down
200 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Now, i opened various websites, and EVERY TIME, the technically *slower* Verizon iPhone beat it. EVERY TIME. It is technically suppose to be slower due to the obvious network speed difference, but for some reason, the Verizon one was still beating the AT&T one. Woo, go Verizon
 
flipster said:
Good choice going with Verizon, insane speed and service.

I had an iPhone 4 on AT&T and a 4 on Verizon. The test went something like this.

AT&T:

Full Bars
4.3 mbps down
300 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Verizon:

Full Bars
.80 mbps down
200 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Now, i opened various websites, and EVERY TIME, the technically *slower* Verizon iPhone beat it. EVERY TIME. It is technically suppose to be slower due to the obvious network speed difference, but for some reason, the Verizon one was still beating the AT&T one. Woo, go Verizon
Click to expand...


Huh? How is Verizon beating AT&T with .80 Mbps down?


OP - Get it at the Apple Store, their return/exchange policy is much better.
 
fkhan3 said:
Huh? How is Verizon beating AT&T with .80 Mbps down?


OP - Get it at the Apple Store, their return/exchange policy is much better.
Click to expand...

Someone told me it was because AT&T's high ping.. I don't know, being a tech geek, this baffled me too.
 
ECUpirate44 said:
I'd buy at the Apple Store. It's just so much easier with repairs, and replacements if needed. Plus, the people in the Apple Stores are less obnoxious than Verizon employees.
Click to expand...

You can always bring your Apple product to and Apple store for assistance. It does not matter who you buy it from.
 
flipster said:
good choice going with verizon, insane speed and service.

I had an iphone 4 on at&t and a 4 on verizon. The test went something like this.

at&t:

full bars
4.3 mbps down
300 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

verizon:

full bars
.80 mbps down
200 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

now, i opened various websites, and every time, the technically *slower* verizon iphone beat it. Every time. It is technically suppose to be slower due to the obvious network speed difference, but for some reason, the verizon one was still beating the at&t one. Woo, go verizon
Click to expand...
v

flipster said:
one thing i find strange:

My brother has an iphone w/ att
i have an iphone w/ verizon

att download speed: 4.78 mbps..........ping: 300 ms
verizon download speed: 1.87 mbps.......ping 170 ms

i cleared all the cache, history, and cookies on both the phones. I closed all the apps, and made it as fair as possible.

Next, i tested to see which was faster (on safari). I loaded a couple websites, and almost every time, the verizon iphone was faster even though att was pulling faster download speeds. It doesn't really make sense, but those were the results. Weird, but why did this happen?
Click to expand...



nateo200 said:
latency. Verizons latency in that case was quite amazing actually double that of at&t! Though at&t in general has much faster speed potential as its 3g technology hspa pretty much has upgrades pushing into 42mbs with mimo and 21 with standard devices while verizon's evdo has a max of 3.1mbs downlink and the only upgrade for evdo now is rev b. Which is 9.1mbs and they aren't rolling this out really at all and no devices really support it except the iphone 4 (cdma) and some really new devices.
Click to expand...
 
flipster said:
Someone told me it was because AT&T's high ping.. I don't know, being a tech geek, this baffled me too.
Click to expand...

Most non-media-intensive websites are probably small enough that they can be downloaded just about instantly even at .8Mb/s... at that point ping will play a much larger role. 200ms is a 50% smaller delay than 300ms, so it is convievable that a normal website will load faster.

AT&T's speed will be more useful when streaming video and downloading files.
 
I'd just go to my local AT&T store since they generally are less crowded than my Apple Store.
 
flipster said:
Good choice going with Verizon, insane speed and service.

I had an iPhone 4 on AT&T and a 4 on Verizon. The test went something like this.

AT&T:

Full Bars
4.3 mbps down
300 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Verizon:

Full Bars
.80 mbps down
200 ms ping
all cache, history and cookies cleared

Now, i opened various websites, and EVERY TIME, the technically *slower* Verizon iPhone beat it. EVERY TIME. It is technically suppose to be slower due to the obvious network speed difference, but for some reason, the Verizon one was still beating the AT&T one. Woo, go Verizon
Click to expand...

YEMV... definitely wasn't my experience
 
thanks for all the feedback. I'm going with Verizon because ATT sucks in my area. Dropped calls are the norm. And, since I definitely want to stick with iphone, Verizon is my only option. I'm hearing rumors more and more about a Sprint iphone, but since my contract is up soon, looks like Verizon. (although I used to have Sprint and their service in my area is fantastic. oh well).
 
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