If you want to pay $500 up front for an iphone, go ahead.
It’s like buying a car with cash upfront versus paying it in installments.
If you can get credit and pay it off with future, devalued dollars it usually makes more sense economically to pay in installments.
Now, if you want a cheap phone with few features, then prepaid would be the way to go.
I use my phone... as a phone. I occasionally text.
My company bought my iPhone for me. I would not have a smartphone otherwise.
If I had my druthers, I’d go prepaid or just get a home phone.
I kind of doubt it costs the phoneco anywhere close to as much as the full retail to get the phone they sell. An $80 phone might be $15 to manufacture. The high prices are just so they can say yes they offered the phone. And it might even be a refurbished phone, costing even less.
Surely somewhere somebody already sells used, cleaned phones?
Sort of. It's like paying the loan forever. The phone is more than paid for by the end of the first 2 years, If it was like a car, the monthly bill after 2 years should drop to only cover service, not the phone.
There's some advantage if you want the latest and greatest phone every 2 years. Then it's like throwing away your car and getting a new one every time the loan on the latest car is paid off.
Prepaid is the way to go if you plan to keep the current phone for a long time, and aren't the type to keep losing or breaking your phone. Today's cheap phone + few features have a lot more features than last years, and probably way more than most folks will use.