Update - 3/26 4:02 PM
As expected, iPhone 5 was announced for T-Mobile today. Find out everything you need to know right here.
A T-Mobile iPhone 5 will be announced March 26, probably. The company sent out invitations to the media on Monday, to join the company for an "exclusive event." A T-Mobile iPhone may not necessarily be the focus of the event, but it's already been confirmed that the Apple handset will eventually make its way to the carrier. What would a T-Mobile iPhone mean for the industry?
For one, T-Mobile is the last of the Big Four carriers not to offer an iPhone. Apple's smartphone will further entrench its ubiquity with a T-Mobile debut. There will be no carrier where you can escape from iOS.
Of course, a couple million folks are already using unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile. But they have never been able to use Visual Voicemail and they crawl along the interwebs at 3G speeds.
It's likely 4G LTE will also be unveiled come March 26, especially if iPhone 5 is to join T-Mobile. The carrier's current data network is woefully unprepared to handle such a powerhouse media streamer, and since the move to 4G LTE has already been announced, a March 26 reveal, ahead of iPhone 5, would make a lot of sense.
In addition to all of this, T-Mobile's planned merger with MetroPCS was approved last week by the FCC and it's beyond unfathomable that the March 26 event won't in some way relate to that.
The invitations that T-Mobile sent out to media read "We're still a wireless company. We're just not going to act like one anymore."
It's unclear what that cryptic line refers to, but it likely has something to do with T-Mobile's intention to switch over to "value plans." Exactly what those would look like and how existing customers would be migrated is also still unknown, but it's been rumored, among other things, that the carrier would do away with phone subsidies. Say hello to your $650 iPhone.
