Sprint-owned pre-paid carrier Virgin Mobile is today teasing iPhone 5S and 5C availability. The carrier didn’t offer a price or dates but we can make some educated assumptions based on previous rollouts.
As for price, Virgin usually offers the iPhone at the same price as Apple does unsubsidized – so $549 for iPhone 5C and $649 for iPhone 5S – though Walmart and Target both offered discounts at launch. The killer feature of Virgin however is the $30 unlimited text/data plans they offer on iPhones (with 300 talk minutes and registration of bank billing). T-Mobile offers the same $30 unlimited already but only offers 100 minutes with that plan (the one I’m currently on).
As for launch, we’re thinking sooner rather than later, especially since a bunch (9) of regional carriers will begin carrying the iPhone on October 1st. Virgin didn’t carry last year’s Apple flagship iPhone 5 until June however, likely due to the slow rollout of LTE on the network. Update: Confirmed October 1st in tweet this morning.
Virgin has recently been marking down iPhone 4 ($200), 4S (20% off) and 5 ($549) and for those who have good Sprint coverage in their area, may make a compelling option.
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I am curious the $30 TMO plan and where to get it (since my Verizon iPhone5 wont work on Virgin/Sprint)
It is hidden on this page. http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans
“$30 100 minutes talk | Unlimited text | First 5 GB at up to 4G speeds”
All you have to do is get a TMob ($.99)nano SIM and sign up online. IF you aren’t a yapper and can handle 100 minutes/month, it is by far the most reasonable deal out there.
only for new activation sim card
Any word on whether they’re region-locked like previous Virgin Mobile USA iPhones?
Wow… 30$ and it includes unlimited data… I hope something like that arrives in Canada someday. Here, to have a 6GB data plan (and not every company offers it), you have to pay at least 60-70$ a month!!
Why would you buy a locked phone from Virgin when you can buy it unlocked from Apple at the same price?