TL;DR: If you have the cash to buy an unlocked iPhone 6 upfront, don’t mind running on the T-Mobile network, and mostly care about data as opposed to voice, you can save well over $500 over a period of two years compared to mainstream plans by AT&T, Verizon or even T-Mobile’s flagship plans.

NOTE: The following post is specific to the US smartphone market.

Over the last 2 years I have been on an AT&T business plan [1] which was not a bad deal by US standards:

• Upfront cost for the iPhone 5: $363.74 [2]
• Monthly cost: $74 ($69.99 plus taxes, fees and phone subsidy)
• Monthly data: 3 GB
• Contract duration: 2 years

I usually stayed under the included 3 GB, but occasionally went over and had to pay an extra $10 for an additional 1 GB. I made very limited use of voice and text.

As I wanted to get a new iPhone 6 Plus, I considered my options. With that same AT&T business plan, here is what the cost would have been for the next 2 years:

• Upfront cost for the iPhone 6 Plus 64 GB: $435.91 ($399 + tax) [2]
• Monthly cost: $74
• Monthly data: 3 GB
• Contract duration: 2 years
• Total cost of ownership: $2,211.90 ($92 / month)

The price of an unlocked iPhone 6 Plus 64 GB, bought directly from Apple, is $927.53 ($849.00 without sales tax). If we spread the total cost over 2 years, we get the following breakdown:

• Monthly device payment: $927.53 / 24 = $38.65
• Monthly service cost: $92 - $38.65 = $53.35

Looking at the monthly cost over the same period of time is useful as it allows us to do meaningful comparisons.

Now let’s look at the T-Mobile plans advertised for the iPhone 6. They give you quite a bit (unlimited talk, text and data with data throttling), but they are not cheap: they range from $50 to $80 per month, “plus taxes, fees and monthly device payment”, that is without phone subsidy. They mainly differ by the amount of 4G LTE data you get (from 1 GB to unlimited, and then “your data speed will automatically convert to up to 2G web speeds for the remainder of your billing cycle”). [3]

For my data usage I would probably need the $60 plan (which, remember, doesn’t include taxes and fees, so is probably at least $65 in practice) to have something equivalent to my AT&T plan. This is about $12 more per month ($288 more over 24 months) than my previous AT&T service.

In short, T-Mobile is not a particularly good deal if you care mostly about 4G data. [4] And, by the way, AT&T now has comparable prices as well.

But luckily there is more: T-Mobile also offers prepaid plans. And although the flagship prepaid plans that T-Mobile advertises are the same as their regular plans, you will find, hidden in plain sight, the following:

$30 per month - Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk

100 minutes talk | Unlimited text | First 5 GB at up to 4G speeds

Now get unlimited international texting from the U.S. to virtually anywhere included in your plan—at no extra charge.

This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com

I had heard of this plan from friends who have been using it for quite a while with Android phones. T-Mobile clearly doesn’t want you to know too much about this: it is a little bit buried, and details of the plan are lacking. But it’s there! [5]

The question now is: does this work with the iPhone 6 Plus? The answer is yes, it does work! Here is what you have to do:

1. Buy your unlocked (“Contract-free for use on T-Mobile”) iPhone 6 (or 6 Plus) from Apple. [6]
2. Order the T-Mobile SIM Starter Kit with nano SIM. The kit is $10 but T-Mobile sometimes has promotions (I bought the kit for one cent).
3. Don’t activate the T-Mobile SIM which comes with your iPhone. [7]
4. Once you receive the SIM, place it in your iPhone.
5. Proceed with activation online [8] and choose the $30 plan. [9]
6. Profit!!!

So now let’s look at the total cost of ownership of this solution over two years:

• iPhone 6 Plus 64 GB, unlocked, with sales tax: $927.53
• Monthly cost of plan: $30 [10]
• Monthly data: 5 GB
• Total provider cost over 2 years: $30 × 24 = $720
• Total cost per month including the iPhone: $68.65
• Total cost of ownership: $1,647.53
• Savings over my earlier AT&T plan over 2 years: $564.38

Of course, this is still not cheap overall, but it’s a bit better, and in addition I get:

• 2 GB more 4G data per month than with the AT&T business plan
• tethering [11]
• an unlocked phone which I can use on many networks around the world
• no contract commitment whatsoever
• the ability to upgrade the phone at any time (just sell it and buy a new one!)
• the pleasure of giving money to a company a little bit less evil than AT&T and Verizon

There are drawbacks to this solution, in particular:

• It is unclear whether I could have ported my phone number and still qualify for a “new activation”. I did not try it because I use Google Voice to forward my calls anyway.
• You are on the T-Mobile network, and this means that you won’t have as much coverage as with AT&T or Verizon.
• This can be seen as a benefit or a drawback: you have to pay upfront for the phone, and T-Mobile won’t help you pay for it when you get prepaid plans.
• There are way less voice minutes (an option to call regular phones is using Skype, Google Hangouts, or other VoIP solutions).
• It is unclear whether fancy features such as Wi-Fi calling [12] or VoLTE are or will be enabled. But since these are voice features and this solution is for people who care more about data than voice, it doesn’t matter much to me.

No matter what, I will see how this fares over the next few months, and in the meanwhile I hope this post will be useful to others!

Disclaimer: This has been working for friends with Android phones and appears to be working for me so far with the iPhone 6 Plus, but I cannot be held responsible if you go this route and have issues of any kind.

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For another article comparing plans by major providers, see iPhone 6 Plans Compared: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Keep in mind that this looks at and iPhone 6, not 6 Plus (so about $100 of difference) and only 2 GB / month plans.

Daniel Miessler asked himself which iPhone 6 to get and I did the same. Here are my thoughts.

First, whether considering the 6 or 6 Plus, there is definitely a decrease in pocketability. But I see the move to larger screens as necessary [1] as we use the devices we call phones more and more as computers-which-you-carry-in-your-pocket. [2]

After Apple’s keynote, I hesitated a little bit between the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus. Initially I was pretty sure that I wanted the larger size. Then I printed the templates and realized that the Plus was larger than I had expected. I started having doubts about whether I would like the larger device, in particular:

• Will it fit in a pocket relatively comfortably, or will it be a constant annoyance? [3]
• Will I be able to use it with a single hand at least part of the time? [4]

In the end I decided to get the 6 Plus and to consider it an experiment: a device so different from the ones I have had so far (iPhone 3G, [5] iPhone 4, iPhone 5) might change my habits in some interesting ways.

I am also experimenting in another way: I have had AT&T contracts since the iPhone 3G in 2008. This time around I ordered an unlocked iPhone 6 Plus for use on the T-Mobile network. [6] I like the idea of having an unlocked device, as well as having more options for plans. I will probably try to get one of the T-Mobile prepaid plans (which they don’t advertise much). [7]

Here are the features specific to the 6 Plus I am looking forward to:

• Improved camera with optical stabilization. I have kids and I consider the camera which I carry with me at all times important. [8]

• Bigger screen. Many activities should be more comfortable with a larger screen. Will I use my phone for reading more? Will I still be interested in getting the next Kindle?

• Improved battery life. Depending on which feature you are looking at, the battery life is supposed to be better across the board. For example, Wi-Fi browsing is 10 % longer and standby 60 % longer.

I am also looking forward to the following features shared by the 6 and 6 Plus:

• Improved speed. The CPU improvement announced is “only” 25% over the iPhone 5S, but the 5S was about twice faster than the 5, so that will be a nice improvement.

• The new hardware design. I like the rounded body, which looks more like the original iPhone and should make the device pleasant to hold. The iPhone 3G, while plasticky, was also great to hold due to the curve of its back, and from this perspective the iPhone 4 to iPhone 5S design was a step back.

• Apple Pay. I don’t need to pay in stores all day long, and this won’t revolutionize payments, [9] but I am intrigued by this combination of Touch ID and NFC. Will it work as reliably and fast? Will it work in stores I am likely to visit? The US is finally implementing “Chip and PIN” cards to help prevent fraud. This means that it might become a little slower to pay with cards than it has been so far, as you will have to enter your PIN. [10] Could Apple Pay be slightly more interesting due to this move?

I am looking forward to retire my beat up iPhone 5!

After reading some recent blog posts (such as 4K is for programmers) about using the Seiki SE39UY04 39-Inch 4K TV as a computer monitor, I figured it might be an interesting experiment and I ordered last week a slightly used one. The price including taxes and free shipping was just under $500.

First, I do want more pixels [1] but it’s a bit unclear to me whether a 39“ monitor is workable or even desirable on a desk. I currently use an old 30” Dell monitor, so I am used to big screens, but 39" is gigantic! [2]

Second, that particular monitor is sold as a TV and not designed to be used as computer monitor in the first place. This means that it has important limitations, such as the absence of a direct input mode, and an abysmal 30 Hz input refresh rate at the native resolution. (This doesn’t mean that you see flickering, as on old CRT monitors. It just means that you only get at most 30 different frames every second.)

So I got the monitor on Friday and immediately set it up. It was easy:

• connect the HDMI cable to the MacBook Pro’s built-in HDMI output
• turn on the TV and wait for it to “boot”
• turn down “sharpness” to 0 (important, otherwise you see artifacts)
• play a bit with brightness (possibly too bright even at the minimum) and contrast

With the image adjustments, picture quality is pretty good. I don’t think it’s possible to get this monitor to have colors that are acceptable for photography or video, but for programming it seems decent.

However the issue that was an immediate turn off is the mouse lag. In practice, this translates to mouse or trackpad input which is very imprecise. Keyboard input is also visibly lagging.

It just take a while, it seems, for the output of the computer to actually make it to the screen. I suspect that part of the issue might not be so much the 30 Hz refresh rate (although you do notice that when moving stuff around and scrolling) as image processing done by the TV.

It is a known issue [3] that monitors and TVs do crazy (and unneeded) image processing which increases the time between receiving data from the computer and actually showing it on the screen. Some TVs have a “direct” or “game” mode which alleviates the problem, but the Seiki doesn’t.

I tried a couple of things to improve the lag:

• I upgraded the firmware, and even tried the 50" firmware.
• I tried SmoothMouse, which seemed to improve things a tiny bit.

In the end I don’t think I can get used to the lag, so the Seiki is going back. I will revisit getting a new monitor once the dust around 4K settles a little bit. There is upcoming 60 Hz output support in OS X for the MacBook Pro, and there should be many new 4K monitors of various sizes coming out this year. I am not sure yet if I would choose something as big as 39", but we’ll see!

I use Firefox regularly for testing, but Chrome has been my default browser on OS X for a few years. Yesterday I used Firefox again the whole day as the latest Dev Channel Update of Chrome was horribly slow (UPDATE: This was due to a bug in Chrome.).

After a few hours of regular use (not web development), it’s pretty clear that Chrome wins on usability. The following features in particular frustrated me a lot:

• Search.
  • Google is just better at search:
    • Google Instant in the Chrome bar. I don’t know if Firefox can do this easily.
    • Unified URL/search field. Firefox should do this. Even Safari does now.
  • The Firefox “awesome bar” remains great for history search and completion, but Chrome has mostly caught up lately.
• Downloads.
  • The Firefox download window is better than in the past, but it’s still an annoying, clunky window.
  • Chrome’s placing of downloads at the bottom of the window is simply better and smarter, as it gives you instant access to what you want to do the most with your downloads: locate them, open them, or cancel them. Firefox should do something similar.
• Keyboard shortcuts for editing text.
  • In OS X, you have two sets of keyboards shortcuts:
    • The Unix ctrl-a, ctrl-e, etc. These works in Firefox.
    • The Mac ⌘-←, ⌘-→, etc. These don’t work in Firefox in rich text editors (which use an iframe). It used to be that ⌘-← would do a browser back even while you were editing fields, and on many web pages you could lose the content you were editing. I suspect that’s why they disabled those shortcuts. But Chrome does it right.
• ⌘-Q quits immediately.
  • I closed Firefox 4 times by mistake, while trying to reach ⌘-W to close a tab. Chrome does this the smart way: you have to press and hold ⌘-Q to quit. This nicely filters out mistakes, and is way better than a clunky confirmation dialog.

So go Firefox, work on those, and make me want to use you!

This weekend I reorganized my iPhone home screen like this:

I tried not to fill the entire screen, keeping one full row empty and one spot in the bottom row, to encourage me to go the extra mile when removing the non-essential apps, and to give new apps a chance to make it to the home screen. The organization is not perfect, but here we go:

• Bottom row (“most important apps”):
  • OmniFocus: I use it extensively on the desktop, and the iOS version synchronizes with it (in the background with iOS 7!). On the iPhone I use it to enter new inbox items on the go and to deal with a few contexts (standup meeting at work, errands, and contexts for a few people I often interact with).
  • Mailbox: my email client of choice. I use it to do a first pass on my email, including archiving unimportant items.
  • Chrome: my web browser of choice.
• First row (“voice and chat”):
  • Google Voice: I moved my number to Google Voice a while back. The app is not great and there is no native integration with iOS’s dialer (Apple doesn’t support it), but for better or for worse that’s what I use now. This covers old-school calls and SMS.
  • Messages: iMessage (SMS is via Google Voice).
  • Skype: chat and the occasional call.
  • Photos: not “voice and chat”, I know, but this had to go somewhere.
• Second row (“social and reading”):
  • Tweetbot: my Twitter client of choice.
  • Facebook: yes I use it.
  • Instapaper: favorite reader.
  • Kindle: to remind me that I need to read books.
• Third row (“audio”):
  • Maps: I know, it has nothing to do with audio (unless you count directions). This is the Apple Maps app, which works well in my location. I occasionally use Google Maps too.
  • Music: provides access to my music collection via iTunes Match.
  • Instacast: my podcast client of choice.
  • Podcasts: the Apple Podcasts app. Contains a few podcasts which I haven’t yet consolidated with Instacast.
• Fourth row (“health”):
  • Food: the Evernote Food app, to remind me to eat well and collect data about it.
  • Up: to remind me to exercise and sleep well.
  • Automatic: to remind me to drive economically and safely.

I use the camera often but didn’t put the Camera app on the home screen as it is so easily accessible from the lock screen.

Finally, I chose a simple built-in wallpaper. My lock screen has a picture of my family.

Like many, I took the plunge on Friday and bought an iPhone 3G (pictures and videos of the saga here). It was clearly not the most reasonable thing to do to stand in line for hours to get an expensive device associated with an expensive 2-year contract with AT&T (which is not a particularly loved company). But hey, all that was known in advance.

What in the end amazed me was the quality of the shopping experience at the Palo Alto Apple store. I am not talking about the 6 hours spent standing in line: this was partly due to the activation process, already expected to be extremely slow, and which took a turn for the worse due to Apple and AT&T servers being down. But even that was kind of expected and part of the game.

The first thing was the quality and professionalism of the Apple store staff:

• On that busy day, the two Apple stores I called actually had somebody available to pick up the phone and kindly answer my questions about stock and expected wait time.
• Employees regularly walked up and down the line, offering water and answering questions.
• At the end of the line, every buyer was greeted and personally managed. The usual wireless device used at Apple stores allowed for just picking a convenient spot in the store to talk and handle the registration process.
• The (tired) employees remained amicable and helpful without being obsequious, providing regular updates, although obviously they couldn't do much about the failing servers.
• When the possibility arose that the iPhones could not be activated before the following day and that instead we would get a voucher for the following morning, the store manager individually talked to all the customers affected and shook hands with them.

In short everything was designed to make you, the customer, feel treated as well as possible given the circumstances.

The second amazing thing is the aura that was put around the iPhone:

• The iPhone was fetched and brought back to you as if it was a unique jewel, in a nice "iPhone 3G" bag containing the quite beautiful iPhone 3G box.
• You were given the opportunity to open the sealed box yourself before proceeding to activation (see the instructions for the retail employees as reported by MacRumors).
• Finally, after all was said and done, the bag was handed back to you like a trophy (and it actually was one in a way given the effort it took to get it).

I know, after all, it's really just a phone ("This phone is that important to you?", said a woman passing by the line, "(Sigh) Different generation..."). But with this masterful mise en scène, you really felt that you went through all this for a good reason. Whoever devised this whole process is a marketing genius.