About a month ago I wrote about T-Mobile’s new Simple Choice Plan, which includes free international data and text message in over 120 countries as well as calls for only 20 cents a minute. It could be a great deal for a frequent traveler who wants to stay connected on the road, and there’s no need to “activate” your international subscription when you travel — the phone connects automatically when you arrive just as if you were back in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
That’s a pretty bold offer considering how expensive and difficult it can be to arrange for international roaming with some carriers. I had an unpleasant experience with my Verizon service on my honeymoon last year in Southeast Asia. But T-Mobile hasn’t always had the best reputation for call quality in the U.S., so I was a little skeptical. Some people in the comments also said that they used the service and were frustrated slower 2G data connections.
After writing the post, T-Mobile later reached out and asked if I would be interested in testing the service myself. I was leaving for Hong Kong in a few days, so they sent a Samsung Galaxy S5 overnight (from Bellevue…) and I was able to test it in Seattle and San Francisco before taking it to Hong Kong, Chiang Mai, Siem Reap, Shanghai, and Macau on a two-week trip with my sister.
Full Disclosure: The phone and three weeks of T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan were provided complimentary, with the expectation that I write a review, though I did pay for the return shipping. As a general rule I don’t provide “sponsored” reviews, but I can say I received no other compensation beyond the three-week loan. These comments are solely my own, and not those of T-Mobile.
T-Mobile Is Great in the U.S.
Simply put, T-Mobile and its 4G LTE service worked great while I was still in Seattle and during two connections in San Francisco. I almost always had four or five signal bars, and the LTE data connection was almost always active. Call quality was great, and downloads were fast.
I ordinarily wouldn’t say this is any different from my Verizon iPhone 5S, but it is an improvement over more recent experiences. I live downtown and across the street from three giant new towers under construction for Amazon, and lately the signal quality has dropped noticeably. I often seem to have two or three bars and it frequently slips to 3G or even the dreaded 1X. Since I don’t place calls often and am usually near a WiFi signal at home or in the office, it’s not a huge problem. But I would say that T-Mobile’s service was better here and at SFO.
Part of this may have to do with lower customer numbers, which means it could be an issue if more people switch over. Another possibility is that T-Mobile used a large breakup fee from an attempted merger with AT&T to upgrade its network, so it’s no surprise that it has improved drastically from where it used to be. In any case, I don’t see any reason not to recommend T-Mobile in the U.S.
T-Mobile Simple Choice Plan for International Use
Many U.S. phones are locked to their carrier’s network, making it difficult to just switch out a SIM card when you travel abroad. Plus buying a new SIM card isn’t exactly convenient. That’s why many people rely on their carrier’s roaming packages.
My previous experiences using Verizon have been frustrating enough that I no longer bother. I just keep my phone off and carry it for emergencies or connecting to free WiFi hotspots. But on this trip, my wife would have liked to be able to reach me or have me reach her, plus we would be going to several countries I’ve never visited where I might like to have real-time access to the Internet and Google Maps.
The all-inclusive feature of Simple Choice is what really appeals to me. I rarely make calls. If I do, they are short and to the point. In two weeks I probably racked up less than 100 minutes, which would be only $20 at 20 cents a minute. But I am big on data, checking six email accounts plus social media as I manage the blog, Travel Codex, and events at my day job.
What matters to me most is that my data plan works all the time, when I need it, and with minimal hassle. So here’s how it performed in each of the countries I visited:
Hong Kong
It took a day and a half before I finally got the phone working, but this does not appear to be the fault of the service. There was some sort of unique setting that needed to be activated by the account owner, and since this was a loaner it took more time to get in contact with that individual. Otherwise it could have been handled in a five-minute Skype call with tech support.
After that, I had good, fast access to 3G coverage in most of Hong Kong, though it did get sketchy as I headed into the New Territories. Calls were great, and my wife commented that it was a huge improvement over the echoes in our previous Skype conversations.
Chiang Mai
Again, I was stumped by some annoying problem with the phone that probably wouldn’t be an issue if I weren’t using a loaner, so it was back to tech support. The text messages welcoming me to Thailand said I had to use a “+” before the phone number, which I ignored. In the U.S. you don’t even have to use a “1” before the area code on a cell phone.
Apparently that “+” is very important. It’s on the “0” key, and without it all of my calls were rejected, claiming the number did not exist, even though data worked just fine. (Data service was mostly 3G, but sometimes 2G; I did not take my phone into the jungle outside city.) On the Android phone I had to hold down the “0”. I don’t know what I would do had I been using my iPhone, but the symbol is so small I had never even seen it before.
Siem Reap
Data coverage was spottier, with a greater proportion of 2G. Upon attempting to take my phone with me to the Angkor temple complex, it didn’t work at all for calls, texts, or data. No surprise. But it was good enough in town, and did provide some GPS coverage among the temples. I ran into the same nefarious “+” issue when attempting to make a call but now knew how to fix it.
Shanghai
I was worried for a while. It took about an hour for my phone to connect to the network — but when it did have access it worked wonderfully. I made calls from just about anywhere in the city, and I almost always had 3G data. It was just like being the U.S., but maybe five years ago.
Macau
For whatever reason the phone never worked beyond GPS and WiFi, even though it said it was connected to the network. It was similar to the issue I had in Shanghai. Maybe the phone had found a signal but there was some back-end process that was required to “register” the phone before I could use it. In any case, I was in Macau for less than 24 hours and didn’t really need to use the phone; we were heading home via Hong Kong the next day, and it worked well enough there to make a few calls.
Samsung Galaxy S5
I have a love-hate relationship with the IT staff at the biotech where I work. On one hand, I’m reasonably tech savvy and don’t pester them often. On the other, I am one of only three people who use a Mac, and when there’s a problem it usually ruins their day. As a former Windows user for 25 years (who grew up in Cupertino) I can relate.
Apple devices work great if you want to do what Apple wants you to do. Step outside their model of the ideal consumer and it’s really difficult to customize anything. If it breaks, Apple’s support team is awesome, but you probably can’t fix it on your own. I’ve learned to accept this trade.
Like a Windows computer, the Galaxy S5 has a ton of features and options for customizing it, not to mention that you can remove the (water resistant) case and switch out the battery. But sometimes too much is too much. I often found myself confused because there were three ways to access the same app, two different places where photos were stored, and what looked like 100 different settings to scroll through with less-than-obvious names.
A baby can pick up an iPhone and figure it out in a few minutes. I had three weeks with this device and returned it feeling I was only halfway there.
I could go into it more, but that’s not the point of this review. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan of the Samsung Galaxy S5 and will probably not buy an Android device in the foreseeable future, but I don’t think these complaints are responsible for any of the temporary issues I had using T-Mobile’s service.
Test Drive T-Mobile for Free!
T-Mobile is now offering other people — not just bloggers — the chance to borrow a device for free and test their service for free. I actually read about this in the news while still on vacation. It doesn’t let you take the phone out of the country as I did, but you can try it out yourself using one of their iPhone 5S devices for seven days, completely free.
I think this is more important. Even if my loaner had performed perfectly while abroad, I still wouldn’t consider subscribing if it provided bad service for the 90% of the year I’m at home or traveling domestically. But fortunately it was actually better than my Verizon phone, so now I’m considering a switch with the next iPhone model. (If you want to switch sooner, T-Mobile will pay your carrier’s early termination fees.)
You can learn more about the “T-Mobile Test Drive” from their news release. You might also be interested in reading about a new offer for unlimited streaming from music services Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Radio, and others without it counting against your 4G LTE data cap (T-Mobile normally provides a fixed amount of LTE coverage based on your plan, and reduced speeds after that). My wife doesn’t use her phone as a mobile computer like I do, but she does stream music all day.
Summary
T-Mobile has redeemed its reputation my mind, and their service during the limited time I used it at home was better than my existing coverage from Verizon. I was not impressed by the phone they supplied, but I expect I could get similar results using my preferred iPhone 5S. Connecting to and using international roaming partners was not flawless, but it was easy enough and good enough that I consider it a good deal as an included benefit of the Simple Choice Plan.
Full Disclosure: The phone and three weeks of T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan were provided complimentary, with the expectation that I write a review, though I did pay for the return shipping. As a general rule I don’t provide “sponsored” reviews, but I can say I received no other compensation beyond the three-week loan. These comments are solely my own, and not those of T-Mobile.
