Sprint rolls out a special plan for the iPhone 6: $50 a month for unlimited use

Kevin Fitchard

Tue, Sep 9, 2014, 7:00 PM

Sprint thinks the new iPhone 6 is a special device, so it’s offering a $50 unlimited plan not available to its other smartphone customers and creating a new “iPhone for life” trade-in program that will put the newest iPhone in customers’ hands every two years.

The new unlimited data, talk and text plan is a further discount over the new $60 a month unlimited smartphone plans introduced last month, right after new CEO Marcelo Claure took over. The iPhone for life plan, however, presents an additional opportunity for customers to save on device costs, though they’ll technically be renting the devices, not buying them.

For $20 a month, customers can get a 16 GB iPhone 6 on Sept. 19, which they can trade in 24 months from now for whatever new generation iPhone Apple releases at the time. That winds up being $480 in device payments. Customers who want to buy the phone can finance it over two years for $30 a month after a $58 down payment, or they can sign a two-year contract and pay only $20.

But contract phones come with a hefty monthly price tag: $85 for the service plan, which is frankly a ripoff. At that rate you’ll wind up paying $1,040 for the phone over two years compared to the other offers.

Since its planned merger with T-Mobile bombed, Sprint has become a much more feisty competitor, and it’s obviously taking advantage of this major device launch to show up the other operators. Of course, the other operators still have plenty of time to chime in with their own promotional offers before the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus go on sale.

But this is probably the right iPhone for Sprint to go crazy with. It’s the first iOS device that supports Sprint’s new Spark network.

Image copyright Tom Krazit/Gigaom.

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