When did cell phone pricing change?

[Tx Redneck]

it's not much different than before. The price of the phone was rolled into your contract and monthly bill.

Exactly, you paid $200 up front and the remainder of the retail price over the term of the contract period. NO phone ever cost only the initial outlay.

I have been looking to upgrade and noticed this exact thing.

I always buy refurbished for around $50 but those don't even seem to be available anymore. My iPhone 5 has a few cracks and scuffs but I will keep it until it blows up now. Screw paying $500+ for a phone.

Look on swappa.com for used phones.

I have the new AT&T plan and a phone upgrade built into the billing. My bill is almost the same, and I've actually got a bit better plan than before. It's just "rearranging furniture", for someone who has their own device (and plans to keep using it) you could actually come out way ahead with the new pricing.

The rearrangement just made the whole billing for the device more transparent. You've always paid the full retail for the device, it just was never displayed in clear detail on the bill. The beauty of the transparency is your monthly bill will go down when you pay off said device where before when the contract had expired, you continued to pay the subsidy price.

[4king]

Just for reference you are not financing the device you are leasing the ability to use one of their devices. When your phone is "paid off" you still need to make payments to the carrier for the phone, however the carriers now call this the free upgrade period or whatever. You turn in the device to them to receive your new phone, you do not receive any money when turning in your device

Basically us old farts need to learn to trade in the phone every time you are eligible. My wife made me trade in my s3 for the s5 6 months ago, can't loose the memory card ability and like mentioned I get phones free and get money from my old ones. I think I got something like $150 for my old phone and the s5 for free