T-Mobile customers are being offered a week-long iPhone “test drive”

Pulling a page from the car dealer’s manual, T-Mobile is offering would-be customers a free seven-day trial of its network using an iPhone 5s. “You (can) have a 7-night stand,” CEO John Legere said in an interview just head of the company’s “Un-carrier 5.0″ event in Seattle. “You cheat on your carrier and it’s free.” Legere said the goal is to help correct some misperceptions some customers still have about the quality of T-Mobile’s network. “Our network is really really different than the idea people have about it.” People can sign up for the iPhone test drive starting June 23 and will get the iPhone 5s a few days later. They then have a week to use it and can drop it off when they are done at any T-Mobile store. (Apple itself used a test drive to get people to try out the Mac back in 1984.) In a bold prediction, the company says it expects more than a million people to take it up on the Test Drive offer in the first year. Apple is providing tens of thousands of devices for the Test Drive, T-Mobile executives said. T-Mobile announced its plans before a raucous crowd at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, a venue packed with a vast number of T-Mobile employees and local customers. T-Mobile originally had its event slated for LA, but the company moved it to its hometown to be close to all the press in town for Amazon’s phone launch which took place earlier in the day.