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Comment by garciasn | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely refuse to pay for a phone; call me old-school, but I am still stuck in the memory of the days when they came 'free' with service contracts.

Me? I will happily take a slightly outdated phone with a new provider/contract where I don't pay anything on top of the expected monthly fee. I have 8 months left on my iPhone13 mini (128GB) w/VZW and will happily change to one of the other Big Threes to make it happen again.

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A regular Verizon plan with tethering that supports the "free" phones costs the same in three months for what I pay for a year of service on Mint.

But sure, the phone was "free".

$2,880 for a Verizon plan with a "free" phone (3 year commitment after all), $720 for three years of my current Mint plan. I could spend $2k on a phone over those three years and I'd still have spent less money.

I pay $20/mo for Visible, and it works great. The average phone plan with a "free" iPhone from a major carrier is $100-120/mo with a minimum 3 year contract. So yeah, paying for your phone yourself is always significantly cheaper. You can even get a device payment plan if you want, and the payment plan + phone bill will still be cheaper than the bundle AT&T or Verizon offers you.

Historically I have never used carrier commitments and paid for phones outright but did it for the first time earlier this year with a targeted offer to get a iPhone 15 Pro from Verizon for basically a couple hundred bucks in taxes. Mostly because it felt like I was getting worst of both worlds paying for a single line Verizon post paid plan without taking advantage of any upgrade offers after my BYOD deal expired.

But I'm now regretting it especially because I'm getting tired of constantly missing notifications on my iPhone being so used to persistent notification indicators on Android. Planning to use T-Mobile to buy me out of my device payment plan once I get around to 800 dollars owned on my 15 Pro because being I hate how I'm locked in to a premium plan I don't come close to making full use of. I still have an unlocked S23 Ultra I can switch back to as my main phone if I decide to.

Based on the Mint website, it appears to be $360 up-front + $360 or $720 for their 'unlimited' annual which I don't know if it includes tethering. I pay ~$684 for VZW for the year, for unlimited w/tethering and HBO Max + Netflix.

Max and Netflix with Ads

That is an important distinction. Those plans together only represent a $17/month value.

And that value is assuming you actually watch both of them regularly.

You would almost certainly save money using an MVNO and a not-brand-new-super-pro phone.

And I already get Max through my home ISP anyways, so really only $8/mo extra value. But I wouldn't watch Netflix With Ads anyways, so really $0 for me.

But that $80/mo plan I quoted doesn't even include the streaming services. That's just the regular data plan rate for a single line. Adding Max + Netflix (With Ads) is another $10/mo, so $90/mo compared to the $20/mo I'm paying now.

Note, when looking at Verizon's website, the big advertized rate numbers show the per-line rate with four lines.

Mint's unlimited is $30/mo when purchasing a year up front. The only "plus" is taxes and fees. It includes tethering. So even with whatever deal you've got going on its still $324/yr cheaper, $972 cheaper after a three-year commitment (if applicable in your case).

The "free" phone only applies to Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Ultimate. At a single line for Plus that's $80/mo. $960/yr. $2,880 over that three-year commitment.

But either way, I don't bother with the "unlimited" plans. You're going to get de-rated after 30-40gigs anyways on Verizon.

> Unlimited data is restricted to on-device smartphone usage. After exceeding 30 GB/mo of 5G Ultra Wideband, 5G, or 4G LTE mobile hotspot data, mobile hotspot data reduced to speeds up to 3 Mbps when on 5G Ultra Wideband and 600 Kbps when on 5G / 4G LTE for the rest of your monthly billing cycle.

https://www.verizon.com/support/important-plan-information/

"Unlimited" plan you're paying $80/mo for that you're going to get 600Kbps if you really treat it as "unlimited".

I personally don't even use all of my 15GB a month. I get lots of people live different lifestyles, but a lot of people don't need "unlimited". So really, I'm not even spending $360/yr, I'm spending $240/yr. $444/yr cheaper than your plan. $1,332 cheaper after three years.

I think you misread, that throttle is for the hotspot data.

And honestly that's a lot better than most throttles. Though it seems silly they even bother to throttle 5G Ultra Wideband. Are those antennas ever going to be heavily loaded with how short their range is?

I pay $120 AUD a year at the supermarket for a prepaid sim.

It's the other way around for me. I refuse to get a phone from my carrier.

Phones "free" with a contract are just disguised loans. The loan is hidden in your monthly sub, which is why you have to be locked from anywhere from 1 to 2 years.

Also I don't want to have carrier bloatware on my phones, and I don't want my phones to be locked to a carrier.

I pay my carrier only for the network. I pay for my phones.

This is literally still how it works. Instead of a contract you have a device payment plan where you're defacto locked into the carrier because if you leave you owe the balance on your smartphone.

The trade-in and switching deals are all done as bill credits so that you are locked in for 2 or 3 years.

If you are using a big three cell carriers with the unlimited postpaid plans and aren't getting a brand new latest model Pro phone for free you are throwing your money out the window, because you're still paying for the phone in your higher plan price.

You will almost certainly save money if you buy the device yourself and use an MVNO instead of the big three postpaid plans. Especially if you buy the device used after it depreciates for a year or two.

Conversely, maybe it's a European thing, but I couldn't imagine having my phone in thrall to one provider. So I buy a phone and then pick whichever monthly-contract provider is offering the best package at that moment.

> I will happily take a slightly outdated phone with a new provider/contract where I don't pay anything on top of the expected monthly fee.

At least for Android, the main issue you'll face is the lack of Android updates. Which eventually leads to apps no longer working because they don't support your Android version.

My phone (2017) still runs everything fast, but I can't install several apps merely because they don't claim to support my old Android version. I have to go online and find apks of the app's version that last supported my Android version.

How is a phone different to a TV or other electronic device? Also, providers are giant assholes, one of the only good things about apple and google becoming a duopoly and their gripes getting tighter is that they can say f** you to providers that just install bloatware on our devices with no concern for privacy, or even basic functionality.

That seems crazy to me. You're paying significantly more for a product that you don't completely own and have less control over.

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