T-Mobile US slashes all upfront phone prices to $0, iPhone 5, too

26 July, 2013

T-Mobile has dropped the upfront cost of all phones available in the carrier's stores to $0, including flagships like the Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z and Nokia Lumia 925.

There's a catch though – you still have to pay for the phone, you just do it in monthly installments on top of your regular monthly payments. Starting tomorrow, customers can grab a new phone on T-Mobile's Simple Choice Plan (starts at $50 for unlimited talk and text plus 500MB high-speed data).

Here's a table that shows the monthly payments for some of the most popular devices. We've added a third column, which is the total cost of the device over 24 months (which T-Mobile conveniently neglected).

Device	Down Payment	Monthly Payments 24 equal monthly payments for 0% APR on approved credit¹	Total for 24 months
Samsung Galaxy S^® 4	$0	$25	$600
Samsung Galaxy Note^® II	$0	$27	$648
Samsung Galaxy S^® III	$0	$22	$528
Xperia^® Z from Sony	$0	$25	$600
iPhone 5^{16GB only}	$0	$27	$648
Nokia Lumia 925	$0	$20	$480
Nokia Lumia 521	$0	$5	$120
BlackBerry^® Q10	$0	$25	$600
HTC One^®	$0	$25	$600
Samsung Galaxy Tab(TM) 2 10.1	$0	$20	$480

Note that this is a limited time offer and T-Mobile didn’t say when it ends. You can also sign up for the JUMP! upgrade program that costs $10 a month and adds insurance and the option to sign a new contract (and get a new phone) every six months. It's similar AT&T Next (which goes live today) and Verizon's Edge.

Source | Via

Reader comments

David Elliott Lewis
27 Jul 2013
7Ex

With T-Mobile, you still have to pay the full sales tax up front. On a $680 product like the Galaxy Note II, in San Francisco, that is additional $57.80 you must pay before you can walk out the door with your no upfront cost phone.