Best iPhone Plan Malaysia Showdown: Celcom, Maxis, Digi.

It is 2020 and Chinese New Year is coming soon. If you’re an Apple fanboy or iPhone supporter, it’s about time to get your hand on these new iPhones if you don’t own one yet. iPhone 11, 11 pro & 11 pro max was launched quite some time ago, to be exact September last year. As usual, iPhones price always remains stagnant even though months after launching.

Tight on cash? Use lots of mobile data? You can consider to sign up a 24-months iPhone plan from any one of our Big Three Telco: Celcom, Maxis and Digi instead of buying an iPhone full price in retail. But, wait… Don’t subscribe to any iPhone postpaid plan before you read this article!

Today, Techrakyat.com will thoroughly dissect all three Celcom, Maxis and Digi iPhone plans, and find out the best iPhone postpaid plan in Malaysia. And sorry, Umobile iPhone plan is out of my consideration for its poor network coverage, so I won’t include it into my comparison.

To be honest, Malaysia postpaid and prepaid plans are always as complicated as they can be. They seem to be mindfully crafted by a group of PhD in mathematics and consumer psychology. One will almost certainly be lost their mind when they going through all those plans. I will do a detailed analysis and break down these iPhone plans by using numbers and simple mathematics.

Best iPhone Plan’s Assumption and Consideration

1. For this article/study, we only consider what is the best iPhone plan for a single user. Not considering the supplementary plan, family plan or shared plan
   
2. Maxis Zerolution 360 and Celcom Easy Rent do offer smartphone rental plan which will not be in our consideration.
   
3. You should be a heavy mobile data user, more than 20GB usage per month. Otherwise, no point to subscribe to plan with so much data.
   
4. iPhone is your only smartphone option. Otherwise, go for Android phones. Android phones are great nowadays. They are not lacking any feature which iPhone offers but cost much less. Don’t get iPhone for sake of bragging.
   
5. You have no problem to commit to a 24-months postpaid plan contract.

Best Value for Money iPhone Data Plan

In my previous article on the best postpaid and best prepaid plan in Malaysia, I have used this similar method to assess which plan gives you the most data for every Ringgit you paid. Although the saving on the iPhone device is important, we still need to find out which of these plans actually is the best value for money in terms of mobile data.

NOTE: For Digi loyalty bonus additional mobile data, I will only consider additional 10GB for easy calculation and comparison since the first year is only extra 10GB, second year only become 20GB. Moreover, other Telco might come up with better postpaid plan options in 2 years time.

Let’s check out the comparison table for each of the Telco iPhone plan.

In terms of mobile data, Celcom Platinum 188 package gives the best value because it costs us only RM1.88 per gigabyte of mobile data. Then followed by Digi 190 and Digi 80. Maxis’ mobile data cost is unreasonably high in comparison, cost as much as RM3.20 per gigabyte.
If we consider 100GB Video Walla in Celcom plans for the first 12 months, Celcom packages become very very attractive and competitive and could be better than Digi iPhone plan for those who watch videos a lot. These Celcom iPhone plans also come with unlimited Whatsapp and Wechat usage.

Best value for money iPhone data plan: Digi and Celcom iPhone Plans

Best Saving on Device iPhone Plan

After we have determined the best iPhone data plan, we need to find out which plan actually gives you the best saving for your iPhone device. First, we gather and compile monthly device fee data for all different iPhone plans.

Then, we multiply the monthly fee by 24 months to obtain the true cost of the iPhone unit.

But our analysis doesn’t stop here. We further munching and crunching the data to find out the percentage of saving for the iPhone compared to retail price as of January 2020.

From the table above, we can clearly see that Celcom Platinum Plus 188, Platinum 148, Gold Supreme 128 and Digi 190 postpaid plan gives us the best saving if we want to optimize our saving on the cost of iPhone.

So for heavy data users, you should always go for above 4 plans. But personally, Celcom is preferred over Digi for its better network coverage.

iPhone plan with the most saving on device: Celcom Gold Supreme 128, Platinum 148 and Platinum Plus 188.

Cheapest iPhone Mobile Plan for the Budget Conscious

Well, the above analysis approach only allows us to find out the best value iPhone plan. But it may not be suitable for a moderate data user and also those with a really tight budget. So, we need to adopt another method to find out the cheapest iPhone mobile plan.

In order to find out the cheapest iPhone plan, we need to sum up the total cost for a 24-months contract:
” monthly mobile plan fee plus monthly device fee and multiply by 24 months.”

If you’re looking to buy iPhone 11, Digi 80 is the cheapest iPhone plan for you. Its total cost is significantly cheaper compared to any other plans available in the market right now.

Cheapest iPhone 11 plan: Digi 80 postpaid plan

If iPhone 11 is not good enough, you’re only interested in iPhone 11 pro or iPhone 11 pro max, then I will advise you to take Celcom Gold Plus 98 and Platinum 148.

Although Celcom Gold Supreme 128 is ranked no.3 cheapest, it is only marginally cheaper than Celcom Platinum 148. You get to enjoy 10GB more mobile data with Celcom Platinum 148 which is a steal when you divide by 24 months. It is only additional RM2 to RM 5 per month to enjoy the extra benefit. So, it’s totally worth to get it in my personal opinion.

Cheapest iPhone 11 pro & pro max plan: Celcom Gold Plus 98 and Celcom Platinum 128.

Final Thoughts

I try my best to summarize and make the data and table easy to be consumed. iPhone is sure expensive, understand your need and choose the postpaid plan & package carefully. Not only that you save money on the device itself, you also spread out the cost over 24 months period. It works even better when you combine with my best credit card in Malaysia guide to pay the bill. It becomes a triple win-win-win situation.

Do keep in mind that there’s a Telco lock for iPhone purchase through this method. It means that in the event you fail to pay the monthly subscription fee, the Telco can lock down your iPhone. And the iPhone will become unusable.

And finally, if you like this article and wish to see more similar content. Remember to support me by clicking any of the lazada/shopee link listed on the site before you make any purchase. And like our facebook page too.