A quick note about "iPhone Plans"

The iPhone is scaring people

One of the most overwhelmingly common questions that I have been receiving looks something like this:

"Can I get plan x on this iPhone? Can I get plans other than the iPhone plan? Can I still get the iPhone for $199?"

There's something important that you need to know about the iPhone. Ready?

You can have any plan you want!

The iPhone is actually, curiously, the only "smartphone" that requires no data plan. You don't need a data plan, you'll just probably want one. In terms of pricing for the phone, the phone is, as you know, $199 for the 8GB and $299 for the 16GB. You get this price as long as the voice portion of your plan is $35 or higher. If your voice plan is $30 or lower, the phone is $50 more expensive.

So what about those iPhone plans.. are they any good?

The dedicated iPhone voice and data bundles are very much improved over the original voice and data bundles that were the heart of so much controversy when the phone was first launched. The plans look like this:

$60	$75
250 Daytime Mins	400 Daytime Mins
Unlimited E/W 9PM	Unlimited E/W 9PM
MY5 Local	MY5 Canada Wide
1GB Data	2GB Data
Visual Voicemail Included	Visual Voicemail Included
75 TXT Included	100 TXT Included

These plans are not so bad. They are definitely the easiest way to pick your iPhone plan - they're pretty much all inclusive. In fact, if sending a lot of text messages isn't the most important thing to you, you can just add call display to either of those for $7 and you're good to go. There isn't a way to get all of the things that come with these plan for cheaper - the $75 one particularly.

But you can get whatever plan you want. You can even not get a data plan if you really want, although you'll miss it.

TRG