WASHINGTON — Understanding a cellphone bill has never been an easy task. But comparing the benefits and drawbacks of plans that allow users to get a new phone every year makes it even more challenging.
For the past few years, wireless carriers and others have offered a variety of “early upgrade plans,” under which a user could get a new phone more often than every two years. Yet, phone users know the companies they pay their monthly bills to aren’t in the business of making new phones available just to be nice.
So, The New York Times has done the math.
The conclusion: if you upgrade every year, you pay more over time than if you bought the phone and kept it longer. On the other hand, the extra costs of leasing are relatively low, for people who really want to have the latest phone.
The Times used a 64GB iPhone 6s to compare the costs. AT&T’s annual upgrade plan, called Next 12, would cost a user $37.50 per month for 12 months before having the choice of trading for a new phone. The total: $450.
Verizon’s early upgrade plan would come to $374.88 per year.
Leasing for a year under Sprint’s iPhone Forever program would cost $321.24.
With T-Mobile, a user would make a down payment of $99.99 for the phone and pay $27.09 per month, totaling $425.07.
Under Apple’s iPhone program, including the device insurance program, the cost would be $36.58 a month, or $438.96 for a year’s lease.
So, how do these figures compare with buying a phone and keeping it for more than two years?
According to the NYT calculations, someone who bought a $750 iPhone 6s in two years will probably be able to sell it for $175, reducing the overall cost of ownership to $575, or $287.50 per year.
Users aren’t obligated to upgrade to the newest phone, so skipping a generation would save money.
In general, experts suggest checking the coverage area for each carrier, to see whether the network works well near where you live and work. If the answer is yes, decide by price.
