iPhone buyers can't sign up for Sprint anymore — three years after T-Mobile bought it

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Three whole years after T-Mobile bought competing wireless carrier Sprint, Apple has now removed references to the brand from its website.

The move means that anyone wanting to buy anything from the iPhone SE through to the very best iPhone of them all can no longer choose Sprint as their carrier.

Not that it will make all that much difference to anyone, though. While Apple has continued to sell Sprint iPhones and allowed people to sign up on its website, the company itself died long ago and has been under the T-Mobile name since April 2020.

Sprint, don't walk

Anyone who was looking to buy a Sprint iPhone 14, or any other iPhone for that matter, can still head to the online Apple Store and make a purchase. But T-Mobile is the carrier to choose from here on out — although the other carriers are still an option of course. It isn't clear exactly when Apple removed Sprint as a carrier option when checking out, but it's thought to have happened within the last day or so.

Those who are already Sprint customers obviously need not do a thing at this point. It isn't clear why Apple has chosen now as the time to remove Sprint from its website, but existing customers have now been using T-Mobile for years whether they realize it or not. MacRumors does note that there might still be some stragglers who are left on Sprint contracts, however.

T-Mobile is on a bit of a buying spree at the moment of course. After completing the Sprint merger in 2020 the company has just announced that it's also buying Mint, the MVNO previously owned by actor Ryan Reynolds. The star will reportedly be kept on in a creative capacity after featuring in years of frankly awesome Mint ads. Whether we'll see Reynolds fronting T-Mobile ads remains to be seen.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.