T-Life (T-Mobile Account App)

★★★☆☆

One of those apps you install only because they’re required for something else. It handles most account management actions, but it really wants to upsell new devices or services when you just want to check your bill or change something about your line. And it will repeatedly spam you with offers on “T-Mobile Tuesdays” unless you turn notifications off again after using it.

There are some things you can only do on the website, and some you can only do in the app, and no clear reason for what’s in each category. And some things still don’t work, such as activating an e-sim for a phone that the app doesn’t know can accept e-sims. (Once I got ahold of a real person, I could give them the IMEI and EID numbers and they could email me an activation code.)

There are also phones that work just fine on T-Mobile’s network, but can’t run the app. Which is fine 99% of the time, but when you do need to do something that can’t be done on the website, you need another phone on your plan that can run it, or else you need to just call them and deal with the phone menus until you convince it to connect you with a real person.