My old phone is getting long in the tooth. Generally in the past I’ve bought an affordable, unlocked 1-2 year old flagship phone once they’ve lost a lot of their value/cost. But I’m considering splurging a bit and getting a new iphone, in particular the iphone XR. This is the SDMB, not reddit or… anywhere else on the internet, so I trust I don’t have to ask you guys not to lecture me on what a sucker I am to want an iphone and how terrible they are and how they’re only for idiot hipsters.
Now, I don’t have $750 to buy that up front. And I don’t want to finance through a carrier, because then I need one of their expensive post-paid plans, which they generally require for financing through them.
But I saw the Apple iPhone upgrade program, which is basically a 0% APR financing plan through Apple (or more precisely their partner bank) rather than the carriers. So then, through that, I should basically have an unlocked iphone that I can take wherever I want, including cheap MVNOs or to prepaid plans. Right? Well, not quite:
Now, since you’re essentially buying your phone directly from Apple, they should be carrier agnostic. Their partner bank gives them the money up front, and you pay the partner bank back. They shouldn’t care how you use your phone. It doesn’t hurt them if I use a cheap MVNO or prepaid plan or whatever. So then why this requirement?
I ask because I prefer cheaper MVNO or prepaid plans. I used to have a $30/5gb T-mobile prepaid plan. They haven’t offered that plan for years, and I was grandfathered in, but I let my account lapse and they took away the grandfathered status. Now I have to pay $45 for the next closest plan they have.
So I looked into it, and there are better options from MVNOs (essentially resellers for the major cell companies). In particular, Mint wireless has $15/mo 3gb data prepaid no-contract plans if you pre-pay for a year up front. Or 8GB for $20. That sounds perfect to me - I don’t use that much data, I have good t-mobile coverage here (that’s the network mint uses), and it’s cheap. And hell, if I get an Apple-financed iPhone XR, then I’m paying $15+37 a month for service and cell phone, which is basically what I have to pay to t-mobile now every month just for phone service on my old phone.
But… I couldn’t buy the new iPhone through Apple and then activate it on Mint, according to their small print. And I don’t understand why Apple cares. The carrier is not financing your phone, their partner bank is. They shouldn’t care where you take your unlocked phone. They’re getting my money even if I don’t even have a cell phone service at all. There’s no contract involved here (except the contract to pay back Apple’s finance bank).
So I’m trying to figure out what my options are. Can I “activate” the new phone on my current t-mobile prepaid plan? And then cancel that plan, get a new sim from mint, and then switch to that sim and cancel my t-mobile plan, would that work? I looked around on reddit, and some people said that yes, you can do that very thing, but none of them had any sources or gave a detailed answer. And if you can do that thing, why does Apple even make you jump through the hoop of activating on one of the 4 major networks anyway? Someone specifically said that if you choose to upgrade the phone after 12 months, essentially renewing your financing agreement, then you have to jump back on a normal post-paid plan from the 4 major carriers, and then switch back off again. That seems like pointless hoop-jumping to me for everyone involved and I don’t understand why that’s even a thing.
I’m hoping someone here understands why this is even a thing, and can tell me definitively whether I could 1) activate this phone on my current t-mobile prepaid plan, or 2) do I need a t-mobile post-paid plan, and 3) after activation, can I switch out the sim for an MVNO outside of the 4 major carriers?
Another option may be sprint. Sprint currently has a pretty killer kickstart deal. Bring your own phone, and get $25 unlimited everything. Sounds great. Especially since they’re trying to merge with t-mobile, so I may get to use the t-mobile coverage and get the $25 plan grandfathered in. That would be pretty good.
But this kickstart plan requires that you come to them with an unlocked phone. You can’t finance a phone through sprint and use kickstart. Fair enough. But then if I get this Apple-financed phone, presumably that looks to sprint like an unlocked phone (since they’re not financing it or giving out out with contract), in theory making me eligible for kickstart. However, apparently the iPhone has to be “activated” on a major carrier, which means that sprint may not view me as bringing my own unlocked phone, if I have to activate it on their network.
- Would sprint just allow me to use an apple-financed, unlocked phone to sign up under their kickstart program, or 5) if they didn’t, could I fool them by signing up for a month of a t-mobile plan, activate the phone, then replace it with a sprint sim card that I got through their kickstart program?
This is way overly complicated for, as far as I can tell, no reason. Apple has no reason to make this requirement, they don’t benefit from it, and it just makes the whole thing an unclear pain in the ass.
So, to summarize my question - is there some way I can use an Apple-financed iPhone through their iPhone upgrade program to pair with a cheap, prepaid plan from either Sprint or an MVNO like Mint?