[Porsche-O-Phile]

Buy an unlocked (and ideally jailbroken) 4 or 4S phone off of CL (these take commonly-available "micro SIMs", the new 5 models take "nano SIMs" and these are virtually impossible to find non-major carrier SIMs for (i.e. anything other than AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) I recommend getting one with the most memory you can find (I believe 32GB is the max for both the 4 and 4S). Don't waste your time with one with only 16GB - you'll go through it in no time.

If you absolutely don't trust dealing with private party sellers on CL or Ebay (don't blame you), I believe you can still buy the iPhone 4 and 4S directly from the Apple store factory unlocked, it'll just cost you more. Get the GSM (AT&T) version, NOT CDMA. Once you have it, go get a SIM card from SimpleMobile or Straight Talk mobile and pop it in. You will need to access the APN settings under the "Cellular" menu to adjust the phone to work with the new carrier (it's defaulted to AT&T's settings usually). This is most easily done by jailbreaking the phone and running TetherMe (costs $5) but there are other ways as well.

This will give you a good phone (both the 4 and 4S are plenty good and not really lacking anything significant relative to the 5/5S/5C models) and most importantly - NO CONTRACT. Here's the math:

With a contract ($70/month is probably a minimum for what service through a major carrier will cost when you factor in voice/text/data plus stupid "made up" charges like "smartphone surcharges" and "high-data device" surcharges", on top of taxes, more fees and other crap. More realistically it'll be about $100/month, but let's just use $70 for sake of argument here:

"With contract":
$99 (32 GB iPhone 5C new in the box) + 24 months @ $70/month = $50 + $1,680 = $1,779 over 24 months

"Without contract / P-O-P's way":
$649 (32 GB iPhone 5C, factory unlocked new in the box) + 23 months @ $45/month (Straight Talk) + $60 (first month, includes SIM card) + $5 for TetherMe = $1,749 over 24 months
(I'm just using the published iPhone 5S price from Apple's web site for apples-to-apples (no pun) comparison, as I said above you'll need a 4 or 4S which you should be able to find for about $100-$200 on Craigslist in new or like-new condition - not sure what Apple charges for a new-in-the-box 32GB 4S that's factory unlocked but it'll certainly be less than a 32GB iPhone 5C factory unlocked in any case...)


You're coming out ahead doing it my way even at $70/month (and good luck getting a plan on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint or any of the other "major" carriers that approaches that - like I said above, plan on $100/month minimum realistically unless you don't get a data plan or something like that, in which case you may as well not get an iPhone at all).

For yuks, at $100/month "on contract":

$100/month for 24 months + $99 (32GB iPhone 5C) = $2,499 over 24 months.

Bottom line - don't sign a contract. You're totally screwing yourself.

Happy iPhoning.