iPhone 5 on T-Mobile vs. Virgin Mobile

[adamfishercox]

I've got a question I need to throw to the hive-mind: Whether it is better to wait for the iPhone 5 on Virgin Mobile, or buy an unlocked iPhone 5 and take it to T-Mobile. Both have a $30 plan for unlimited data/text and limited minutes, perfect for me, and neither come with a contract. My concerns are about performance and resale value of the phone.

Here are the pros and cons as I understand them, please correct me:

- T-Mobile will probably not give me 3G speeds until they upgrade their network.

- An unlocked phone on T-Mobile will probably have better resale value since it is GSM unlocked, rather than the Virgin phone which is still tied to their network (I don't quite understand GSM/CDMA locking but that's what I understand of it.)

- A Virgin Mobile phone may come out sooner than an unlock. (Would the difference in resale value be great enough to wait for unlock?)

If you can speak from experience using iPhone on T-Mobile that would be great, I'm a little concerned about compatibility/reliability.

 

[adamfishercox]

Anybody?

 

[Mr Hill]

Virgin Mobile uses Sprint's 3G network so in all honesty, your T-Mobile 2G speeds would be comparable to the "3G" you experience with Virgin.

Also yes a GSM unlocked iPhone will have much higher resale value than a CDMA one locked down to Virgin.

If you're in a major city T-Mobile should have HSPA+ for the iPhone up sometime in the next couple of months and they also offer unlimited data so I would go with them.