Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Rock-Bottom, Last Resort, Worst Way to Buy an Apple iPhone

There are three ways to buy an Apple iPhone:  buy it outright, buy it with a contract, or rent it.  Not surprisingly, renting is the most expensive and I'll get to why.

Buy an iPhone unlocked:  $750

It's all yours and do what you like with it.


Buy an iPhone with a two-year contract commitment:  $299 (16 GB)

This is the standard deal and you can spend $499 if you think you need 64 GB but consider well if you need 64 GB of memory on a cellphone then your actual need is a life.


Rent an iPhone with the AT&T Next plan:  $0 up-front / about $30 per month for two years

Absolute worst way to do it.


Add up the costs for the two year commitment to AT&T Next.  Over two years, that comes to $720.  In other words, it would cost almost as much as the price of an unlocked iPhone if you pay for it that way.  And that doesn't pay one dime toward a carrier support plan.


All of the above approaches will require a service plan with a carrier and these may be anywhere from $40 to $100 a month based mostly on how much data will be transmitted with phone time and message texting being lesser considerations.

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