Why Do I Even Need A Smartphone Anymore?

Of the four phones that I have on my contract with AT&T, two of them have contracts that will expire in September and October. Because AT&T allows “early” upgrades, one phone is already eligible for a full upgrade and the other will be eligible in two weeks. Needless to say, I’ve been playing around with the idea of using one of those upgrades to get a new phone.

While running this idea around in my head, a couple of thoughts occurred to me. The first is, why bother upgrading at all? Upgrading a line with the on-contract price of a new phone commits me to another two years with AT&T on the line upgraded. AT&T does phone buy backs (trade-ins if you will) which I’ve used successfully a couple of times already this year. So in essence, I could trade in my iPhone 5 for $270, get a new phone on-contract for $200 or so and wind up $70 to the good. So what’s not to like? Like I said, I’ve done this twice in the past year on my other two lines and I’ve managed to own some pretty nice phones. The rub is in the fact that I’m extending my contract again for two years and I remain in hock to AT&T for those lines. I’m sure AT&T and all the carriers love people like me who change phones frequently and are in contract on multiple lines and who keep extending those contracts by upgrading.

Now I’m in the unique position of being able to liberate two of those lines. So I thought that I’d just pay the off-contract price for a new phone and use the $270 from the iPhone 5 trade in to offset the cost. The phone that looks to be the most likely one I’ll buy is $600 off contract, so with the iPhone trade in, I’d only be paying $330 for my new phone. And since I’d be buying off contract, no extension of agreement is necessary and my two lines will both be “liberated” by October. Good deal, neh?

Well, on further reflection the question comes to me, why do I even need a smartphone at all? My iPad Mini is my most used gadget by a long shot. I also have an 5th generation iPod Touch as well as an iPod Classic (which stays in the car attached to the car stereo). I make almost no phone calls with my iPhone and seldom use it at all in the house since I have the iPad. And in point of fact, the only reason I don’t use the iPad more outside the house is because it’s a WiFi only model. The iPad Mini is small enough and light enough to carry just about anywhere and with an LTE model I could use it anywhere.

So why not just let the contract on my iPhone completely expire, then sell it for whatever I can get for it in 4 months and buy a dumb phone and upgrade my iPad to an LTE model? For upgrades of the Mini, I could trade in my current Mini to AT&T and buy an LTE version at a discount (with the trade-in) either with a 2-year data only contract (which would save a bit of upfront cash) or on a month to month no-contract basis (paying more for the Mini even with trade in). Sounds to me like a winner.

Honestly, at this moment, I’m not sure what, if anything, I’ll do. Maybe I’ll do nothing and just keep things the way the are. But the more I think about it, the more the last option looks attractive. Hmm. What to do, what to do?

Explore posts in the same categories: Technology