I get out of the house fairly often to work with my iPad Pro, and it’s great being able to go wherever I want since I have a T-Mobile data plan for it. Tethering to my phone has always had too many annoying quirks for my taste, and I’d rather not burn my phone’s battery just to get online while working under the trees by Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, or in a park, or by the lakefront where there is often no WiFi.
The iPad mini has mainly been my book reading device, but I’ve started using it for more stuff around the house in the last couple years. When the mini 7 came around earlier this year, I decided to spring for cellular so I could start taking it, too, out of the house more often. However, a second data plan felt like overkill. Besides, I had heard you can transfer carrier plans between iPads, though I assumed it involved logging into a website or—shudder—calling someone.
Today I finally tried it so I could bring my iPad mini 7 on a walk for lunch. Dear reader, I’m not sure this process could get simpler, at least on T-Mobile.
The data plan switcheroo
For posterity, here are the relevant details:
- We’re on T-Mobile with a Magenta family plan
- That plan includes one data line that my iPad Pro has used for years
- iPad Pro M4 13” (previously the M1 Pro and other 12.9” models before that)
- iPad mini 7
Check out screenshots below, but here is the process in a nutshell: I started with Settings > Cellular on the mini 7, initiated the transfer, verified I wanted to make the change on the Pro, waited around 20-30 seconds for T-Mobile to (I assume) swap the data line to the eSIM in the mini 7, and boom I was off to Potbelly’s.
I wonder if this process is so smooth because iCloud is somehow involved; after all, it knows I have two cellular iPads. Maybe it somehow takes part in the eSIM switch? Otherwise, how would T-Mobile know the mini 7 is connected to me at all?
To finish this post, I switched the plan back to my Pro with no trouble. It was around an hour and a half from the start of this experiment, walking to and from lunch, and writing most of this post. I don’t know if T-Mobile has any kind of cap or cooldown on how often you can do this in a week or month. But I am pleasantly surprised at how easy this is, and I’m looking forward to bringing my mini with cellular out of the house more often.