Verizon — Blog — Healy Chen

I was wrong

I have in my hands the brand-new iPhone 14 Pro. Getting my annual iPhone upgrade could not have been easier, if you discount the fact I had to wake up at 5:00 AM two Fridays ago to preorder. I am lucky to live only a few blocks away from an Apple Store. That is precisely where I chose to pickup the new phone last Friday. No need to play the UPS waiting game for shipping.

I chose a 5:15 PM pickup time so that I can go after work. I am not too rabid a fan that I cannot wait a few more hours to get the new product. In fact, I didn’t even activate the iPhone 14 Pro until the next day. As expected, there was a significant queue outside the Apple Store. I however had an advantage: my appointment was purely picking up. I’m not trading in a device (at that time, anyways), nor am I setting up the new iPhone at the store. Just hand me the device and I can get out of there.

So I bypassed a bunch of people in line with more complicated transactions. Perfect.

Not sure why people want to trade-in a device at the store without first transferring data to the new phone. Apple makes it absolutely easy with “Quick Start”: put the old iPhone next to the new one, follow the prompts, and about an hour or so (depend on how much stuff you have), I was done. In Apple parlance, it is indeed magic how effortless this data transfer method is. No more restore from iCloud backups for me, henceforth.

Also surprisingly easy was the transition from physical SIM card to eSIM. I had reservations when I found out the entire iPhone 14 lineup in the United States will feature eSIM only. I feared that the new activation procedure won’t be as simple as taking the SIM card out of the old iPhone and put into the new. Worse, it read like a perfect opportunity for Verizon to play games and force customers to pay the extortionate $30 upgrade fee. Want to transition to eSIM? Pay up, sucker!

I was wrong! Switching to eSIM is super easy. The Quick Start process transferred the data from the physical SIM inside my iPhone 13 Pro right onto the new iPhone 14 Pro. It was done in matter of minutes. No need to call Verizon or go to the Verizon website. Apple have really thought this process through to make it as seamless as possible for the customer. Bravo.

Back to the old school

Getting a basic flip phone with no Internet capabilities these days is surprisingly difficult.

A few weeks back, my brother calls me saying he needs a basic “dumb” phone as soon as possible. For reasons I will not go into, he’s banned from using a smartphone with cellular Internet for the foreseeable future. Luckily, there’s a Verizon store within walking distance from campus, so I went there after work.

The Verizon store did have a flip phone in stock to sell, a TCL FLIP Pro. Holding that in my hands brings me right back to the Motorola days of 150 pixel by 100 pixel display and thousands of colors. Typing out a text message with only the number pad? These kids have no idea what that was like. I wonder if the TCL Flip Pro even has the Snake game on it…

But there was a problem: Verizon doesn’t sell any plans with only voice and text messaging. Data is a prerequisite, and turns out even the dumbest phone on the market has Internet capabilities (the Flip Pro certainly does). AT&T and T-Mobile are no different. This arrangement does not work for my brother: his phone simply must not have Internet access.

So we needed a cellphone plan that only has voice and text. There seems to be a few Internet-only cellular providers (meaning: no brick-and-mortar stores) that still offer basic phone plans. These companies piggyback off the cell towers of the big three. One such entity is US Mobile. For a tiny sum of $8 dollars a month, you get unlimited talk and text. Pay about $14 dollars to start and you will get a SIM card in the mail in two business days. Setup is completely online, and once the SIM is activated, simply stick it into any phone you wish to use.

It’s too bad Verizon can’t offer such a plan, but at least we got the Flip Pro for free. It’s considered an “upgrade” for my brother’s phone line, though I’m not sure if going backwards to a dumb phone can be called an upgrade. Nevertheless, he’s all set now, getting an opportunity to use the archaic cellphone technology that I grew up with.