I’m switching wireless carriers

Switching wireless carriers (part one)

Plus: iPhone 16 news in brief, a sweet Android tablet deal, and two ways to follow your favorite sites

Jared Newman   |   September 10, 2024

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a veteran tech journalist, and this is Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, consider signing up to get it every Tuesday.

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Apple announced new iPhones this week, which for me means one thing above all else: I’ll soon be free from AT&T.

I bought an iPhone 13 Pro Max through AT&T in September 2021, taking a three-year commitment in exchange for a deep discount, and since then AT&T’s service has become dreadful here in Cincinnati. Dead zones are everywhere, and the network seems to hate buildings now. (I suspect that 5G is to blame.) Once that three-year contract is up, I’m moving on.

But where to? That’s what I’ll cover over these next two newsletters. I’ll also be updating my “How to pick a data plan” guide for paid subscribers in the next week—including up-to-date info on carrier iPhone deals—so keep an eye out for that.

While switching carriers used to require a leap of faith, now you can try before you buy. T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T sub-brand Cricket all offer test drives of their wireless networks, and signing up is easier than you might think. There are just a couple caveats to be aware of before you start.

Taking the test drive

If you want to try out a different wireless network, you need an unlocked phone. Verizon automatically unlocks phones after 60 days, but T-Mobile and AT&T will only unlock phones that are paid off in full, so you can’t test drive a competitor while your phone’s on a installment payment plan. With AT&T, you also have to manually submit an unlock request. (AT&T mistakenly granted my unlock request ahead of schedule a couple years ago, which is why I’m able to test drive T-Mobile now.)

Your phone also needs to support eSIM, which allows the carrier to set up a connection without a physical SIM card. Most mainstream phones from the past four or five years support eSIM, including the iPhone XR and newer, Google Pixel 4 and newer, and Galaxy S20 and newer. (In the United States, the iPhones 14 and up don’t support physical SIM cards at all.)

Assuming you meet the prerequisites, you can start a trial by downloading the app for the carrier you want to try. T-Mobile’s app offers a three-month trial, the My Verizon app offers a one-month trial, and the TryCricket app offers 14 days. If you’re not already a customer, these apps will walk you through the setup process.

I set up the T-Mobile trial on my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 over the weekend after hitting yet another AT&T dead zone, and was surprised by how seamless the setup went. Then, I set up Verizon’s trial on my iPhone, and it was just as easy. No payment information is necessary, and you merely tap a few buttons and fill out some basic info, at which point you’re connected. (Just bear in mind that the initial connection takes a couple minutes, so be patient.)

Keep your number

While testing out another network’s data connection, you can still use your main SIM’s phone number for calls and texts, though this may require some settings tweaks:

  • On an iPhone: Choose the defaults for calls, messages, Facetime, and data during setup, or adjust these options later under Settings > Cellular.
  • On Pixel phones: Head to Settings > Network & Internet > Mobile network. Choose your SIM card to set its call and text preferences.

Strangely, Samsung phones don’t offer an easy way to use your phone number from one SIM card and data from another. As a workaround, you must use the Phone by Google app in place of Samsung’s dialer, as it includes an option to set your regular SIM as the default under Settings > Calling account. You can then head to Samsung’s Settings > Connections > SIM Manager and choose the test network as your primary SIM, though you’ll still have to be mindful to choose your main SIM when sending creating new text messages.

Samsung also has a “data switching” feature that can fall back to the secondary SIM if the main network is having connection problems, but this seemed to drain my phone’s battery faster than usual. I quickly turned it off.

The results

In my case, testing T-Mobile’s connection was easy: I simply went grocery shopping at my nearest Kroger, which seems to be AT&T’s kryptonite. Even in the bowels of the store, I was able to visit Kroger’s website and clip digital coupons without incident—a simple task that’s given me endless grief in recent years.

That’s all the evidence I need that T-Mobile will suffice where AT&T fails. While I’d normally consider Verizon as well, my wife is already a customer—it’s a whole complicated in-law family plan thing—and I’d rather spread our coverage across two networks for any connectivity issues that do arise.

That doesn’t mean I’ll be signing my time away with T-Mobile for the iPhone 16, though, as I have other plans to get T-Mobile’s network coverage at a fraction of the price. More on that in next week’s newsletter.

My mistake!

Due to an editing snafu, last week’s issue on ditching printed business cards included a broken link for my iOS Shortcut that links to a QR code from your home screen. Here’s the correct one.

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Until next week,
Jared