Or you could buy a $200 phone like the Nokia G42, and then go with a cheaper service provider.
My wife chose that because she doesn’t use her phone much, and it’s built for home repair.
Turned out it is a way better phone than we expected. Mine cost about $800,- and there is no way I can say it’s that much better.
I use a small service provider, that has their services through one of the biggest, but it costs less than half per month.
And when I buy a phone, I have complete freedom to choose whichever phone I want, disregarding limited service provider discounts.
And buying from free competition dealers, also gives a nice rebate.
I went from Verizon ($200/mo for 2 lines) to Xfinity ($80/mo for 2 lines) to JMP.chat ($7/mo for 2 lines) to US Mobile (still about $18/mo for 2 lines). I still have JMP as my cell provider for the SMS-to-XMPP bridge (my sms comes through XMPP), and just have US Mobile for data. My current monthly is still about $20/mo for 2 lines with 10gb of data. Additional data is $4 for 2gig if I go over.
Frankly in the US now US Mobile is hard to beat. Their unlimited plan is $45/mo,and they have coverage on every carrier (my phone will switch to the dominant local carrier wherever I go, and it’s usually 5G).
So you could, you just choose not to.
I personally never bought a phone though my service provider, I don’t care for that kind of bullshit tie in.
This is why I buy a used phone 1 or 2 model years behind.
You’d be surprised how much of a discount you can get when someone upgrades.
I’m currently running Pixel 5, and I own three of them for less than any new phone. This gives me the ability to have a hot spare/test device.
I’m in the same boat as @[email protected], even if just getting a regular phone id need to be able to drop 700-1k$
And ofc the shit consumer protection laws here in the US, at least through my carrier I can have really forgiving insurance LMAO
I could not afford to. That’s not really a choice I am making. 🤦♂️
Or you could buy a $200 phone like the Nokia G42, and then go with a cheaper service provider.
My wife chose that because she doesn’t use her phone much, and it’s built for home repair.
Turned out it is a way better phone than we expected. Mine cost about $800,- and there is no way I can say it’s that much better.
I use a small service provider, that has their services through one of the biggest, but it costs less than half per month.
And when I buy a phone, I have complete freedom to choose whichever phone I want, disregarding limited service provider discounts.
And buying from free competition dealers, also gives a nice rebate.
Yep.
I went from Verizon ($200/mo for 2 lines) to Xfinity ($80/mo for 2 lines) to JMP.chat ($7/mo for 2 lines) to US Mobile (still about $18/mo for 2 lines). I still have JMP as my cell provider for the SMS-to-XMPP bridge (my sms comes through XMPP), and just have US Mobile for data. My current monthly is still about $20/mo for 2 lines with 10gb of data. Additional data is $4 for 2gig if I go over.
Frankly in the US now US Mobile is hard to beat. Their unlimited plan is $45/mo,and they have coverage on every carrier (my phone will switch to the dominant local carrier wherever I go, and it’s usually 5G).