My iPhone 5 has started to act wonky in the last few months so I started looking into replacing it with an iPhone 6s 128GB.
It seems that sometime during the last week or so, they’ve eliminated the contract discount, so the phone I was looking at for $500 (with AppleCare) is now almost double!
I really don’t like the idea of adding another $30 to my monthly bill under the payment plans they’re offering. Grrrr.
This sucks.
A lot of cell phone providers are moving away from the contract subsidized phone. However, they’re also dropping the price of their plans so that the price works out to be similar in the end. And if you’re willing to get something that’s not the absolute latest and greatest you can end up paying a lot less in the end. What’s your carrier?
With Verizon’s old plans, you can get a $15-$25 per month discount on any phone line that’s off contract (though you have to ask to get it). Their new plans also have cheaper data and per-line charges.
I have AT&T with unlimited data so I really don’t want to lose that.
Are you actually using a large amount of data every month? I too had the unlimited AT&T plan, and dropped it for a cheaper one when I realized that I wasn’t using anywhere near the allotted data for the less expensive plan. The less expensive plan also included the ability to make the iPhone a personal hot spot, which wasn’t included in the unlimited plan.
And unlimited texting and calling.
I had a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T until May. It was a 21 year old account. If you’re in a metropolitan area, I recommend you take a look at Sprint - they spent a huge chink of their holdings in just the last couple years upgrading their 4G network and I have zero complaints about switching. They have an iPhone Forever plan that might be worth looking into.
I’m an Android girl and walked out of a Best Buy last May with a brand new Galaxy S6edge (something like $850 at the time) without giving them any money up front and an unlimited everything plan for $50 a month. The phone is $25 on top of that, with yearly upgrades or I can pay on it for 2 years and it’s mine - so effectively just $600 for the phone and the only fees and taxes are on the $50 portion of the plan.
I pay the same monthly bill now, for a new phone and nothing down, as I was paying AT&T. The kicker is, AT&T never really gave me unlimited 4G - they throttled me whenever I used over 5gigs a month. No such thing with Sprint - and it’s faster. The best data speed I got with AT&T was about 6Mbps down and 2 up. My Sprint speed right now is 34 down and 10 up.
The only tiny bit of disappointment I have with Sprint is the voice quality could be better. Sprint to Sprint calls are freaky good HD, but others are a little tinny - though I haven’t had any dropped calls and I did sometimes with AT&T. It’s a very minor thing for me, though, as I use my cell for voice calls maybe twice a month! YMMV.