Should you get an iPhone, Android device, or try out Windows Phone? And which carrier is the best? These questions can be hard to answer without some hands-on time with your device of choice, but T-Mobile wants to help you out with its new "Test Drive" feature.
Starting June 23, T-Mobile is teaming up with Apple to offer a free, one-week test drive of the iPhone 5s - no cost, no commitment.
Interested users can sign up for T-Mobile Test Drive at t-mobile.com/testdrive, and the carrier will send one of Apple's latest smartphones a few days later. Use it for up to seven days free of charge, and drop it off at any T-Mobile store when done.
"That's it. Absolutely no money down. No obligation. No strings attached," according to T-Mobile, which said it expects at least one million people to take a test drive.
"The way this industry forces Americans to buy wireless is completely, utterly broken. I'm here to tell you there's a better way," John Legere, T-Mobile CEO and President, said in a statement. "While the carriers ask you to buy blind, the Un-carrier gives you transparency. Our network kicks ass, and now people can experience for themselves what a data-strong network can do with T-Mobile Test Drive."
The other major carriers - AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon - will allow you to return your phone and cancel contracts within 14 days. But they usually include a $35 re-stocking fee, unless the phone is unopened.
T-Mobile is hoping that users who take the test drive will see the benefits of its 4G LTE network, which now reaches more than 227 million of the 318 million U.S. residents. During an event in Seattle tonight, T-Mobile announced that it had "wideband LTE" in 16 major metro areas and voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) in 15, making the network "data strong, it said.
"The old telecoms designed their networks for a time when your phone's only app was a phone call—and they haven't shaken that dial-tone mind-set," said Neville Ray, T-Mobile CTO. "Our 4G LTE network was built in the last year and a half, so naturally, we built it differently. We built it for the way people use smartphones and tablets today, and we built it with a mobile Internet architecture so we could roll out new technologies faster."
For more on carrier speeds, meanwhile, check out PCMag's Fastest Mobile Networks 2014, which saw a big turnaround for T-Mobile this year.