If you get an iPhone 4 from Verizon (the only phone Virgin and Verizon have in common) and get a 2Gb data / unlimited talk/text plan for $100/mo - 2 years later you'll have spent $2400. If you get an iPhone 4 from Virgin and the $35 monthly "unlimited data" plan (2.5Gb data at 4G, then you get throttled down to 3G for the rest of the month) with 300 minutes of talk time - 2 years later you'll have spent $1,189 - but this plan is not equivalent to the Verizon plan... so... If you get the iPhone 4 from Virgin and pay the $55 "unlimited" data plan you're still limited to 2.5Gb of 4G then the rest is 3G (Verizon limits you to 2 then bills for extra). Unlimited talk minutes. After 2 years you'll have spent about $1,700. So yeah, Virgin is much cheaper is you don't mind the older technology phones. But then if you don't mind older technology phones, get a dumb phone from Boost on pure pay as you go. Phone is $50, only pay for what you use, so you can wind up paying as little as $130 for 2 years if you make no phone calls. If you are like me who made 61 minutes of phone calls last month at 20c/minute (current rate for new customers) you'd pay $342 for those two years.