T-Mobile ad pricing assumes you’re using automatic payments, which come with a $5 discount per line that’s separate from the company’s $5 fee for in-store payments.
Every other aspect of the plan seems to be the same as the lower-tier “Plus” plan: it offers unlimited talk and text, Netflix Basic (or Standard if you have a family plan), Apple TV Plus, and “unlimited.” ” data, with up to 50 GB of broadband-quality data. After that, your connection slows down to 600 Kbps. If you work from home and have Wi-Fi, 50 GB might be enough, but if you travel or go out a lot, you might get frustrated with that limit.
However, there is a caveat. T-Mobile won’t consider you “ready to upgrade” until you’ve paid for half of your phone; otherwise, you still have a 24-month contract. AT&T offers a similar deal with your AT&T Next Up Add-on– For $6 per month on top of your installment plan, you can upgrade if you’ve paid 50 percent off your phone. The $6 per month is an extra cost, yes, but on a plan that is, according to a chart included in T-Mobile’s announcement, $15 less per month (before fees, of course).
The plan is positioned as an alternative to the three-year locks offered by other carriers, which often come with a “free” phone, of course, usually manifested as a monthly credit to your account.
The freedom of yearly updates is nice, but it feels less relevant now than ever, in an age when smartphones change less from year to year and tend to last much longer, even if their batteries might not.
