iPhone Pricing: Which Plan Will You Choose?

Lauren McCarthy | Mar 4, 2012 10:00 am | 4 comments | 3270 reads

While the fate of Apple’s iPad still lies in the balance, the iPhone 4S is becoming more readily available through new networks in China. The much sought-after smartphone has long been available through China Unicom as the nation's lone carrier, but now China Telecom is throwing its hat into the ring on March 9, with pre-orders having already begun last Friday.

If you’re in the market for an iPhone, you now have numerous choices to make. Do you get a phone through a plan or should you purchase a phone and plan separately? Do you go with China Unicom or China Telecom? Most importantly, how do those plans work?

Back home, most expats are used to signing up with plans that require no money down, and which include a phone and set monthly payments. As you probably know by now, iPhone plans in China work in a dramatically different way. Packaged plans require a substantial fee at the start, some to all of which will go towards your monthly costs.

At China Telecom, a packaged plan will cost you RMB 5,780 for a 16GB iPhone4S, regardless of the duration of the contract or the price of your monthly plan. If you are signing up for a three-year plan of at least RMB 289/month, the phone is free and all of this initial payment gets stored in your account as prepaid monthly credit (from which your monthly rate plus additional charges will be drawn). If you opt for a cheaper monthly fee, you will have to pay for the phone; prices will range from RMB 1,699-4,199. This cost of the phone will then be deducted from the initial RMB 5,780 and the remaining balance becomes stored credit. Similar plans are available for the 32GB and 64GB phones as well, with packages costing RMB 6,899 and 7,899, respectively.

China Unicom has similar plans available: 1) the 16GB phone package costs RMB 5,880; and 2) packages with monthly fees of RMB 286 and higher come with free phones.

Seeing as the price differences are fairly negligible, most people base their decisions on the provider and network. China Telecom's iPhone 4S will be CDMA-compatible, whereas China Unicom's iPhone only runs on the GSM network. For the run-down on the difference between the two, check out those links.

Photo:todaysiphone.com

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Re: iPhone Pricing: Which Plan Will You Choose?
Posted Mar 7, 2012 10:19am by lauren_mccarthy

Hi bernd1,

All this certainly is confusing, and this post only addresses the issue of CDMA for the iPhone 4S, not for any other phones or the carriers in general.

In regards to the iPhone 4S, the issue is phone compatibility. The Unicom version can only run on the following networks (UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA/GSM/EDGE), while the Telecom iPhone is CDMA compatible. The Unicom/Telecom links in the post offer all the technical specifications of each iPhone, just scroll past the plans to the bottom of the page.

This is also the reason that China Mobile users can't get 3G b/c the iPhone isn't compatible with their network.

Deputy Managing Web Editor

Re: iPhone Pricing: Which Plan Will You Choose?
Posted Mar 6, 2012 2:50pm by bernd1

Surely not a helpful post.

GSM usually refers to 2G services that all Chinese networks support.

They use different 3G standards though. You had to use Unicom for W-CDMA, if you wanted to use the same device in China and Europe or US. Has this changed?

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Re: iPhone Pricing: Which Plan Will You Choose?
Posted Mar 5, 2012 8:57am by Yeting

Unicom GSM-only? Surely that's a mistake?

Re: iPhone Pricing: Which Plan Will You Choose?
Posted Mar 4, 2012 4:01pm by samanthawang

Confusing