Having lived in a lot of countries over the past couple of decades, I can say this is absolutely something Americans do completely wrong. Just buy your phone at full price. The "free" phones cost significantly more than a full price phone.
It was also much easier to import cheap unlocked phones from abroad when the whole world used at most 4 frequency bands. Now there's several dozen and I don't think even the most expensive flagship phones support all of them.
To paraphrase a common phrase I've seen around here: The "G" in "LTE" stands for "global".
In Norway several of the mobile phone telecom operators sell phones on down payment plans that cost nothing extra compared to buying it cash up front.
It has been like this for several years and it’s great!
You can pay a pretty low monthly down payment over a period of 36 month.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, I don’t even have to enter into any binding contract for any phone plan to buy the phone this way. And even if I did have to do that the most they are allowed to bind me to is 12 months, by law.
Consumer protection laws in my country are fabulous :)
Is this an option that's available all the time? Back when the Nexus 5 was still new, I tried doing exactly this and took one I just bought to my local Verizon outlet to have it activated on their network. The tech there told me that while the phone DID have the hardware needed to be compatible on Verizon's network, he was "not allowed" to activate it for me unless I bought it directly through them. I've since switched to T-Mobile and never looked back.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they rip people off on cheaper phones, but for higher end phones the “free” phones are typically exactly the normal price of the phone split over 24 payments. Every time I buy a new phone I compare buying it directly versus via a carrier and it always comes down to which option currently has a promotion or sale I can take advantage of.
That’s what I thought and did this for years. However, the major carriers do offer promotions and incentives that make the phones cheaper, sometimes significantly.
e.g. of recent deal from major US carriers: iPhone 16 deal for $16/month for 36 months ($576 total) versus Apple store $699.
Right, but what does the plan cost? If it’s more expensive than other providers and you are locked in for 36 months, that’s where they make their money.
it's a lot easier to pay smaller amounts over time than it is to pay a large lump sum, even if it is technically less after x number of years. Delayed gratification etc, but also sometimes folks need a phone and can't put off the purchase until they save up the upfront price. T
If you take a look at marketshare, Americans are animals that spend well beyond their means in bulk. Apple products or Samsung products dominate the smartphone market and it's the expensive ones.
To be fair I know a nontrivial number of people who bought their iPhones used. I’m sure that happens in the android market, but it doesn’t seem to be as common in the US. I think the fact that iPhones have offered acceptable support for much longer than android has helps a lot there.
Things being the way they are is exactly the reason Americans can't afford to pay for a cell phone upfront. There's no amount of "planning ahead" that will change that when people are living paycheck to paycheck and having to go into debt to afford basic things like groceries.
Huh? My Pixel 9 was free (late 2024) with a 20€/month 2 year contract that includes unlimited calls, SMS, and 5 gigs of 5G data. 480€ when the cheapest full price was over 500 (and then wouldn’t include the data or calls). Certainly not an American thing, and certainly not "significantly more".
I suspect that many Americans would struggle to afford to pay for a phone outright. The vast majority live paycheck to paycheck and are already in record amounts of household debt.
Americans are, adjusted for inflation, literally richer than Americans have ever been at any point in history right now, at every quintile in the income distribution. If that's "far from good" I'm not even sure what that phrase means.
If the point is just that the hedonic treadmill means Americans will continue to be less and less happy as we get more and more wealthy, well, that's the problem we need to fix.
How is that measured? All the anecdotal evidence I’ve ever seen suggests the number of hours you have to work at realistic (especially entry level) wages to afford rent, basic food, and transit to said job is currently higher than it’s ever been as far as I can tell in my lifetime. Rent alone has risen substantially higher than inflation, which seems like it should especially skew the numbers on the low end.
You sure about that? Look up Visible, Mint Mobile, Total Wireless, US Mobile, Tello... Same carrier networks, same quality of service. You can even pay a bit extra for prioritized data and other fancy features. You can get basic unlimited plans for $15-30 and premium plans in the $30-50 range vs $100+ at the big carriers. The only difference is that you aren't paying for your "free" phone.
In this case you’ve switched providers, though. Might be a good idea but doesn’t say anything about whether, e.g., ATT will lower your price if you bring your own phone.
I’ve read that these virtual networks also get lower prioritization so you can get low bandwidth when the higher tier users are active. Not sure how accurate that is.
That’s the whole point of buying your phone unlocked: to allow competition between carriers. Growing up in Europe we had very cheap prepaid plans but you still paid more for out of network than in-network, so lots of budget conscious people had two or more prepaid sims and swapped between them. No monthly bill and you add money to whichever number is low. It helped that receiving calls or sms was free, so you could ring someone and have them call you back if you were a bit low on funds.
Man thinking back, I probably got away with less than 2 dollars a month back in 2006-2010 era.
And if you don’t use a lot of data, at least US Mobile has a by the gig plan. My family has three phones on it for a total $30 per month. Those months that we go over, it automatically charges $2 for each extra GB, with data pooled between the lines.
It is easy to switch between Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile as well. This was helpful for me as all three of the networks normally have one bar or less at my house. T-mobile WiFi calling works more reliably than Verizon.
HN apparently can't fathom that people pay for Verizon because the service is good. I get Verizon free through work and sorry it's noticeably faster than Visible. The discount plans aren't actually the same but cheaper. If you were going to be a Verizon customer anyway then the free phone is actually free. You don't get a discount for BYOD and the service is the same price whether you take the phone or not.
Why is anyone even tolerating a carrier selling them a phone locked for a single day (unless it is free with plan or something in which case there's nothing wrong)?
If you're using an iPhone, buy it from the Apple Store, full stop. No reason not to. If you need financing they have that (ACMI). They also sell older models refurb (like new condition) to save even more.
For a cheap Android (Revvl 60 or whatever), they'll just give you another cheap one next time you switch carriers, right? They are basically e-waste after a year or two and don't get updates.
And basically the only flagship Android widely sold in America is Samsung which is also sold DTC, albeit only online, and sometimes has promos for direct purchase? Maybe not as much financing tho. The other OEMs either don't sell in the US, or have some DTC presence too (ex. OnePlus).
> AT&T’s policy allows unlocking of phones on postpaid plans after 60 days if the device has been paid in full, or after six months for phones on prepaid plans. T-Mobile’s policy allows unlocking of phones on postpaid plans after 40 days if the device has been paid in full, or after 365 days for phones on prepaid plans.
If the phone is paid in full, what is the justification for not unlocking it?
"Verizon was previously required to unlock phones automatically after 60 days due to restrictions imposed on its spectrum licenses and merger conditions that helped Verizon obtain approval of its purchase of TracFone. But an update applied today to the TracFone unlocking policy said new phones will be locked for at least a year and that each customer will have to request an unlock instead of getting it automatically."
Not true, iPhones were unlocked automatically after this 60 day timeframe. My gf has been using a 14 pro max previously financed from verizon on t-mobile since just outside that timeframe.
Here’s another fucked up policy that’s about a year old from T-Mobile: I very rarely financed phones direct through T-Mobile. My 15 pro max will be the last since I had to fight them for a device unlock prior to paying off in full. I would have paid it off in full if they didn’t change their policy to kill bill credits if you do pay early. I threatened them with costco’s 90 day return policy if they didn’t do it since I run dual sim for coverage, they relented.
I am curious though, had I never had the phone unlocked, I wonder if Apple would have swapped in an unlocked board when they did my board swap for RCS issue?
I would find it so deeply enjoyable to see the homes of Verizon management equipped with paddlocks on their bathroom doors, refrigerators, garages, etc.
It would be my pleasure to announce to them that the terms of service dictate that the padlocks would never be removed, but the new subscription fees would be announced shortly.
It would be delicious to see such a delightful revenge sink deep into their lives.
Until such time, enjoy our esteem, you scoundrels!
I'm glad I stumbled across this: life circumstances have allowed me go abroad for a trip the past two years. One thing I had forgotten about since the last trip were some of my group being unable to get one of the cheap prepaid data eSIMs because their phone was still locked to the carrier. I've been tempted to replace my aging iPhone SE 2022 (^1) with a trade-in deal and get a new phone, but it never occurred to me that would mean being forced to use AT&T's $10/day (capped at $100 in one billing cycle) "International Day Pass" during future trips until it had been paid off for long enough.
(^1) I wish I wasn't so tempted after ~4 years, but the battery health has dropped to 75% and the performance has suffered dramatically. A new battery is on the table I suppose, but I am split between just putting that money towards a new phone.
>I wish I wasn't so tempted after ~4 years, but the battery health has dropped to 75% and the performance has suffered dramatically.
Won't help with performance, but I've found that keeping bluetooth and location turned off lets me use the phone for the whole day without needing a recharge. Only thing that eats battery is video calls.
Can a carrier ever surreptitiously lock an unlocked phone, or is it only on phones financed or purchased through the carrier? For example, if I bought an unlocked phone and attached it to my Verizon plan, could Verizon lock it?
Historically phone locking was done at the modem level via an NCK code - if a phone is supplied by a carrier the modem will come pre-locked and will only be unlocked upon entry of an NCK code which the carrier has the secret key to generate (hash(secret+imei)). With this system if the phone is not locked to begin with I am not aware of any way to toggle this mechanism remotely.
With smartphones however, the game has changed. Apple for example no longer locks their modems at all and instead rely on a software-level check as part of the "activation" process (at first boot where it also gets its client certificates/etc to talk to Apple services) - said activation policy can be changed remotely, and Apple are very cagey about their full capabilities. I have read of some vendors selling iPhones that would be unlocked at first but lock themselves to the first carrier they see.
It's unlikely Apple would ever enforce or change an activation policy on a phone purchased directly from them, so you should be safe. But technically, it's up to the phone manufacturer. I am not sure what the Android situation is in comparison.
> I have read of some vendors selling iPhones that would be unlocked at first but lock themselves to the first carrier they see.
Yeah, there's no official documentation, but that's how the Best Buy ones are. I've seen it called "US Reseller Flex" and "SIM Out" policies. There are some shady websites that have a GSX login that will report the policy name, anti theft lock status, and service history if you put in the IMEI. The intent is to prevent having to keep separate stocks of identical hardware pre-assigned to each carrier you sell for.
IIRC, Best Buy isn't supposed to sell you a phone without at least adding it to an existing carrier account. They act as an agent of the carrier, not selling the phone standalone like Apple does. It's possible that someone could then resell it while in-box as a scam, but that's not what Apple/carrier intended.
Interesting coincidence. I just ordered a new Tracfone for 50 bucks. I had assumed the unlock policy was 1 year. The same phone, unlocked, was much more expensive. Strategically, I figured that after being a Tracfone customer for well over a decade, I probably wouldn't get around to switching for yet another year, so I'm OK.
I still remember at the beginning of the mobile era, when there were tons of small "repair shops" that would unlock phones for a small fee. They are likely still around.
One of my oldest MSN friends (I think I have him on WhatsApp now) would unlock iPhones and later Androids for ages, his status on MSN was literally "I will unlock your phone" or something like that. Guy was from Belize, cool dude.
Buy your own phone like everyone’s saying, but also use an MVNO instead of setting money on fire paying the major carriers. The better MVNOs even have multiple carriers and allow you to switch at any time.
From a different news story about this change, it doesn't apply to any phone activated before the government issued its approval earlier this month. So any phone which you activated in 2025 is not covered by this.
What irks me about this is that consumers are already financially on the hook in terms of subscription periods and cancellation policies and conditional deals etc. The only legitimate reason to "lock" the phone hardware is to ensure the person doesn't pay with a stolen credit card and vanish... which doesn't take a whole dang year!
The long locking-period is just a way to impose a stealthy and anti-competitive switching-cost onto consumers, denying them the right to use the things they own.
It's also an example of how just because one doesn't care about politics... doesn't mean it won't "care" about you.
> While the Biden-era FCC’s leadership criticized yearlong locking periods and proposed a 60-day unlocking requirement for all carriers, the Trump FCC appears likely to write a new industry-wide standard that would be welcomed by large mobile carriers.
Go a step further and switch to Mint, T-mobile's pay-as-you-go subsidiary. I'm paying $180/year for a single line. I've been on mint for ~3 years now.
On Mint your traffic is routed with lower priority than T-Mobile's main customers. In practice, I have only experienced this at busy airports and an MLB game - where basically service dropped to near zero. This is in the Boston area. Obviously not ideal if you're in those conditions regularly. Otherwise it's been awesome.
If the service is of interest my referral code is below. It gets you a $15 renewal credit for joining. Will the winds of votes love or hate a referral code? Who knows! apologies if I'm out of bounds. (I don't understand why it's out of bounds)
Pocket-sized devices with more computing power than we could have dreamed of as children, and society has somehow allowed it to become a completely miserable experience.
I'm part of the problem. But I won't be (as much) after I get a used one and put Graphene OS on it.
The gist is that it allows a third-party seller to stock a bunch of identical, not-yet-locked phones and offer a choice of carrier plans. The phone binds to whichever carrier the user first activated on.
So if you’re buying a phone, verify it is not one of these units.
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