I go back and forth from Apple to Android. ATM I'm getting tired of the larger devices. Boost Mobile has a great deal on the 64GB SE for $229. I don't use Boost...and I'm assuming most people don't either, that's why it's so cheap. I would primarily use it as a glorified iPod with the ability to use Apple Pay. In my Android world I'm rooted so a lot of apps and Android pay won't work. With hot spot on my other phone it would always be connected via wifi and it's small enough that I wouldn't care much to carry it around. I imagine eventually I may be able to get it unlocked on the cheap compared to what prices are being offered now. Anyone using a SE for an iPod?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone SE (2016) Kicking the tire on iPhone SE from Boost Mobile
- Thread starter lip008
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Are you saying you're going to have a second line open with a separate carrier (Boost) to use the phone solely for NFC payment and iPod purposes? Seems incredibly wasteful to me. Save your money and carry a debit card.
I wasn't going to open a second line. You can just buy the phone contract free for $179 (16GB) or $229 (64). I was told you don't even need to be on wifi for Apple pay to work. I would have no month to month expense. Just the cost of the device which is in line with the latest iPod. I'm using a Fire phone because I can't decide on a daily driver. If I liked the device I could just pay to unlock it and use it as my regular phone. The fire phone's hot spot works out of the box so I'd always be connected with it.
Ah. Well in that case I'd say go for it. From what I hear the SE is a great phone so you may end up liking it enough to use it as your daily driver. Two birds with one stone!
Not familar with boost but most budget carriers, contract free or not, require you to jump through the hoops of setting up a month to month agreement with the upfront cost of the phone, and then a nominal amount (10$ a month) to pay off the rest of the phone over 12 or 24 months.
Now, you can pay that off at anytime/up front, +1 day or whatever of monthly service, cancel, and then it's truly contract free, but in the end, it's not $249 as a total price for the phone.
But then you'd have to unlock it if you ever wanted to make it a daily driver.
Could be totally wrong, but check the fine print.
Now, you can pay that off at anytime/up front, +1 day or whatever of monthly service, cancel, and then it's truly contract free, but in the end, it's not $249 as a total price for the phone.
But then you'd have to unlock it if you ever wanted to make it a daily driver.
Could be totally wrong, but check the fine print.
I dont think you'll be able to unlock it though unless you have a full 1 year of service with them first.
That's the thing. You do need a year of service with them or you can pay someone on eBay. I bought a 5s from Virgin Mobile and sent it to my sister once it was unlocked. I paid $18 to get it unlocked. But those prices to unlock went up so I don't know if it's worth it. It's a shame Sprint/Boost has to practically give these devices away.
With the way things are going right now concerning Sprint, you might want to avoid them altogether.
Masayoshi Son is still looking to offload his bad investment. The rumor is merging Sprint with T-Mobile. That's been a rumor in the past, but the new twist is that he's willing to have T-Mobile swallow Sprint if he can keep a minority stake in T-Mobile.
Poof. Goodbye Sprint. Gone.
Not right away of course, but a year from now when you want to get the damn phone unlocked?
Masayoshi Son is still looking to offload his bad investment. The rumor is merging Sprint with T-Mobile. That's been a rumor in the past, but the new twist is that he's willing to have T-Mobile swallow Sprint if he can keep a minority stake in T-Mobile.
Poof. Goodbye Sprint. Gone.
Not right away of course, but a year from now when you want to get the damn phone unlocked?
Hey let me know, if you find someone on eBay that will do it for that cheap I'll go buy a new SE for $179.
What I heard as far as unlocking its $50 now for boost and they say its not a guarantee they can unlock it for sure.
So Im kinda afraid to get stuck with a phone that I cannot use as a phone.
Boost's current unlock policy is pretty much the unlock policy that Sprint had before February 2015. It's pretty draconian.
That sucks man.
A brand new iPhone SE for $179 though. You cant beat that.
Would be nice if we can get it unlocked somehow.
Any unlocking process necessarily involves either someone on the inside or software riding illicitly on the carrier's network. The danger in both is why the unlock prices went skyhigh, particularly after the AT&T thing.
Boost is a small MVNO so the chances of getting caught are much higher.
But yeah…if you could succeed…
Interesting.
Even if it was $50 as long as its guranteed to work I'd go for it.
But if it fails and I get stuck with it would suck.
Did anyone get a boost mobile iphone unlocked from a 3rd party imei unlock service that worked for good.
Swiftunlocks doesnt do boost as far as I know.
I just send him a message asking because I see that he does Sprint 3rd party unlocks so if he can do boost also would be great. I'll keep you guys posted.
[doublepost=1487624505][/doublepost]Ok I just talked to Swiftunlocks.
He has a $39.99 IMEI unlock for SprinT/boost that will work and he has a 100% guarantee on it.
Im purchasing it right now. $220 after all said and done is not bad
Last edited:
Once price is around $30
[doublepost=1487626648][/doublepost]
Interesting.
Even if it was $50 as long as its guranteed to work I'd go for it.
But if it fails and I get stuck with it would suck.
Did anyone get a boost mobile iphone unlocked from a 3rd party imei unlock service that worked for good.
Swiftunlocks doesnt do boost as far as I know.
I just send him a message asking because I see that he does Sprint 3rd party unlocks so if he can do boost also would be great. I'll keep you guys posted.
[doublepost=1487624505][/doublepost]Ok I just talked to Swiftunlocks.
He has a $39.99 IMEI unlock for SprinT/boost that will work and he has a 100% guarantee on it.
Im purchasing it right now. $220 after all said and done is not bad
Not bad at all. Used 16 GB's on swappa are going for more than that.
[doublepost=1487626792][/doublepost]
That's the thing. It makes me more confident in buying the device. The networks would eventually merge. Probably work like how Google Fi pulls from Sprint and T-Mobile now. I'd be more confident in the device working or at least getting an unock.
$30 to unlock it is not bad.
Along with free shipping for the device and $12 for tax. I went ahead and just ordered one
I'll keep you guys posted on the unlock process once it arrives in 3-5 days.
The iPhone SE is a great phone. Very fast with great battery life.
Amen there. I worked for them 2 years ago. In the 4 years I worked for Boost Mobile/Virgin Mobile, we really didn't progress much. Sprint hasn't either. They have so much potential but zero management to do so. They've got such fractured frequencies on their towers and in the city, the speeds are so abysmal. I have friends that still work there and a friend who works for Sprint. We're all still surprised they even exist. With this potential merger, maybe not for too much longer.
Plus, isn't CDMA kinda going by the way of the dodo bird slowly but surely?
We were on Sprint for 16 years, through all of the bad of Network Vision. It never really got better. We left when we could no longer make phone calls.
I always wondered why Masa wanted Sprint. Apparently, it had been as one part of a two part plan. Buy it and then merge it. He made a critical error though in discounting the FCC. And now he's in the same spot only the value is significantly reduced and he's just looking to get rid of it.
In my 16 years with Sprint I knew it's corporate culture. It's a CYA culture where everyone else is to blame but yourself and no one wants to do anything that would jeopardize their position. It's systemic and Masayoshi Son didn't see it. Or ignored it.
Now it's crushed him. Despite Claure's best efforts, started a year late I might add, because Son gave Hesse a year's chance to fix things.
Not to sound arrogant, but I find it interesting that in most of my comments concerning Sprint and the corporate culture those Sprint reps I have discussions with here on this forum and elswhere confirm them.
As to CDMA. Yes, it's dying. But there's still a large number of people using it that neither Verizon or Sprint can yet kick them off.
In Sprint's case though that may never happen. If they merge it will be T-Mobile kicking those people off CDMA and not Sprint. It will probably come sooner though. T-Mobile doesn't seem to have the same issues about shutting stuff down that Sprint does. Took them over 12 years to shut down the Nextel network.
For whatever reason I agonized over leaving Sprint. I said they were going to have to pry my SERO plan out of my cold dead hands. I went from having little to no 3G to finally having 4G gaining simultaneous talk/data to losing simultaneous talk/data with Spark without ever being told. Then they switched the name of Spark to now LTE Plus like it makes a different. I make fun of this in one of my other forums all the time. Such a stupid company. I pay Cricket $8 more a month for unlimited than with SERO but I truly do get unlimited and NEVER lose a call or go through a dead spot. I understand that's all relative to location. AT&T probably has places where it sucks, and I hate that company, but it doesn't suck for me.
The kick in the head for us is the fact that in a lot of places where I live Sprint is great. I can go to the Olive Garden and pull down over 50mbps on Sprint.
But I don't live at the Olive Garden and we don't go there all the time. In between work and home there were still 3G only towers. Sprint has two towers that serve the building I work in. Depending on which part of the building I was in I could have LTE or 3G because the south tower was only updated to LTE a year after the north tower! At home LTE was less than 1mbps down!
I had ED1500 but gave it up in a snit to get a lower cost plan (Best Buy) and made Sprint recompense me for all the BS by subsidizing an iPhone 6+ in 2015. Didn't really want the phone, but I was going to get my pound of flesh.
In any case, call failures were the last straw. My wife is pretty even keeled when it comes to the frustrations with tech. But she racks up minutes like a lot of people rack up data so not being able to make a phone call drove her to want to hurl a ~$900 phone through the wall. That was pretty much when I knew it was time to leave.
T-Mobile works every where I am around here and even when it drops to 4G (home) the signal is strong. I've done speed tests on 4G where I got double the data down then I did with LTE on Sprint! No buffering anymore and for the first time I can just use my data and not have to worry about congestion. T-Mobile is no speed demon here but at least the signal is usable and I'm not worrying about not getting something done. I've been able to do everything I set out to do.
I think Sprint made a lot of bad decions that have just piled on. Starting with Gary Forsee and the Nextel decision. The irony is that the many who really is responsible for the entire mess has nothing to do with Sprint any more but STILL gets a monthly salary from the company!
LOL!If I could I'd live at The Olive Garden.
I love that place
I'd live here…
Central and McDowell. Sprint is garbage here, connects to 1x on some tower 20 miles east in Scottsdale. T-Mobile gives me excellent LTE.
Win/win!
PS. Just can't go in the basement or the attic after hours (or the main eating area). They say it's haunted.
I know we're off topic now and beating a dead horse, but I still find it hilarious how similar others' situations were to mine when I was with Sprint.
When I switched to T-Mobile from Sprint (you were on my thread helping me through the process if you recall!), it quite literally was a paradigm shift. I had no clue what I was missing out on before because my entire smart-phone life had been with Sprint's network. The best way to describe the difference I've experienced is that T-Mobile has LTE coverage with occasional small spots of 4G. Sprint was the opposite. 3G coverage with occasional small spots of LTE. And the LTE speeds sucked in comparison to T-Mo's.
Hell, the other day I was crossing the border going into Canada, UNDERWATER, and pulled 110mbps down. That is effing insane, especially when I think about how I was ecstatic for getting 15mbps on Sprint, right next to one of their towers. T-Mobile isn't perfect but Sprint shouldn't even be considered 'competition' anymore.
Of course not! I was merely testing T-Mo's international network handoff and the iPhone 7's water resistance simultaneously. Coast Guard was not as impressed as I was though.You know, proper paperwork isn't that hard to get.