Two years ago, I wrote about how I kept upgrading to a newer iPhone without paying the full cost each time. I repeated the approach this week, and it still worked for me. Here is the updated calculation.
Apple has released a new iPhone. As usual, the price prompted plenty of comments. Here is why I think the total cost may be lower than it first appears.
Subscriptions
A phone contract can seem appealing because buying the device outright feels expensive. My iPhone XR cost €859.
For me, buying the phone separately was still cheaper. A SIM-only plan cost around €10 a month, while a plan that included the phone cost around €50 a month.
Over a two-year contract, the phone plan would cost about €1,200. The SIM-only plan would cost €240, bringing the total with the €859 phone to €1,099.
Resale value
So the SIM-only route saved me about €100 up front. Another advantage was the resale value of the old phone.
I sell mine after two years, while it is still in good condition. At the time, I could sell my iPhone 7 for about €300 on eBay.
Subtracting that from the €859 price of the new phone left €559. Spread over two years, that was about €280 a year, or roughly €25 a month—around half the monthly cost of the bundled plan in my example.
That is less than €1 a day for a device I use 3 hours a day.