What phone to try to test coverage?

[Jaggrey]

I'm in the process of moving my lines from Sprint to T-Mobile. My dad has a line, but I haven't moved him over yet because I'm not sure if Tmo will work for him, since he spends a lot of his time working in a basement in DC. I want to test his coverage with a prepaid SIM and T-Mobile compatible phone, but I know that not all phones support all the necessary bands that they use. A friend of mine has a BlackBerry that I was going to test with, but I want to make sure it supports all the bands that T-Mobile uses to make sure he does (or doesn't) have coverage. What bands should I look for? Do all T-Mobile branded phones going back a few years support all the bands they currently utilize?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[tippmann15]

Is wifi available? Many of tmobiles phones include free wifi calling.

GS4/iPhone5

 

[Jaggrey]

Nope, unfortunately. That would have been perfect if so.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[patruns]

4G Overview | T-Mobile Support

 

[Jaggrey]

Cool thanks for the link... that answers my question. I confirmed that the phone I'll be testing with has the same bands as my current HTC One, minus the LTE which is fine since I'm just testing for voice.

So can anyone familiar with T-Mobile answer this question: can I buy a SIM card (using the current Slickdeal) and a $10 refill prepaid card and then have everything I need to test coverage?