Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Our VZW bill lowered substantially after the phone subsidies went away. Staying away from new phones and payment plans is the way to go. I don't take more than basic pictures or game, and I typically read or watch tv with family, so having an uber-HD screen, capable of taking and playing movies in > FHD doesn't appeal to me.
My wife does like/use/appreciate the majority of the features coming out for new phones, so we patiently waited last year for prices to come down a couple of hundos and then took advantage of a trade-in program that was reasonable. She traded her 5S for a 7+. She takes a lot of pictures and uses her phone as a tab for our son on occasion, as well as FaceTiming every other day with relatives.
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Personally, I'm not overly impressed with iOS. I've owned several Blackberries (still have one I use every day,) a single Android phone (HTC One M7) and now this iPhone 6+. My 6+ works very well, but it's not ideal. I still miss some of the features of my HTC and think I might go back to Android in a couple of years or more. The only apple product I have is the phone, so I'm not overly invested like some I know (laptop, iPad, phone, watch, Airplay, etc.)
Your claim of bill reduction may only be half thought out.
I agree that if you don't take delivery of a new phone every two years, there can be a cost benefit for a time.
But as I said above, the high end phones from any manufacturer aren't cheap. That's not really an Apple thing. So let's say someone wants the next whiz bang Apple/google/Sammy phone for $800. No subsidy. Sure, you're paying less per month for the plan, but it's not necessarily commensurately so with what the phone cost with subsidies.
My wife and I ran all the scenarios last time when getting iPhone 6s phones (~2 years ago), and I was far more cost effective to keep our current plans with subsidy than the "savings" we had when we divided the phone price by 24 and even 36.
But if subsidies go away, then not so sure.
My father has the high end Samsung. Ive played with the high end Samsung tablets too, because my iPad is very long in the tooth and I'm agnostic to the OS for a tablet. IMO some of the additional things that may not be possible in iOS that are in android are overshadowed by iOS just being a generally better and less clunky OS. IMO... ditto for iPad. Really wanted to like the high end (similar price to iPad) Sammy tablet. No thanks.
And all the "design flaws" people used to dig on iPhones for (no memory slot, embedded batterybthat isn't easily replaced) are all disappearing from android phones...
Not a claim; a fact. Our bill used to be ~$125. We had not upgraded before the subsidies ended and were able to switch plans to one that costs ~$83 (plus $10 more, if we need a bit more data for the month.)
The reason we didn't need to upgrade via VZW, is because we got year-old iPhones for $200 each (her a 5s and me a 6+, a year apart) from a friend who was a baller and tech junkie, and liked to upgrade his phone every single year. Lucky for me, he had an issue with the 6+ and had Apple replace it with a brand new one before selling it to me.
I plan to keep my 6+ for another couple of years. When I need to upgrade I'll keep an eye out for a 2+ year-old model for a steal from one of the many deal sites.
My wife did NOT need nor ask to upgrade her iPhone 5S last year; however, she really liked the new 7+, so we discussed waiting for for a deal and getting her one. Verizon offered her a trade-in value of what we paid for her 5s AND a couple hundos off retail for her phone, so we agreed to go with the payment plan.
Our bill is now $96. If I had taken the deal to trade in my 6+ for a 7+ our bill would still be less than the original $125. I'll admit that our data has been reduced; however, the only time we use more than 2GB of data is when I'm on travel and use my phone as a hotspot for my laptop (I used 4GB of data over the past 2 weeks, but rarely use more than a gig per month while at home. Heck, I often don't use half that, since I dl and stream everything at home, via wifi.)
You got a "deal" because you got a good price in a used phone and intend to keep it for a while.
My point is that if you upgraded in two years like many do, a new base iPhone 7 is $649 or $27/month. So your $83/month plan would really be $137/month if you got new phones.
Had you had a subsidized plan, and got the phone for $199, your $125 plan would have been $141.
$137 vs $141 is in the weeds.
So it only saves real substantial money over how it used to be if you keep your phone longer and don't break/drop/lose it. Or buy used.
Agreed. We don't need new phones every two years. I used to upgrade just because I could, even though the standard upgrade fee was $200.
The long I wait, the cheaper a much better phone becomes. Once I/we get used to having a 3, 4, or 5 year-old phone, a 2 year-old phone will seem like the same every-2 upgrade as previous.
