I’m a current college student who is looking to buy a brand new smartphone. I consider myself pretty frugal, and am looking for a phone for my 20ish dollar a month cellphone bill which I pay myself.
I was looking to buy a phone to last me the remaining four years of college, since my old phone isn’t of use anymore.
But although I have the funds, the $649 pricetag of the iPhone 6s is hard to swallow. I have a prepaid cellphone company so I would be paying full freight for the phone. I see it as a four year investment (if it’s not broken or stolen), but seeing it’s the price of a decent laptop, considering my financially conscious upbringing, it’s hard, as I have always been aware of money.
Luckily, I have let’s say more than four times the cost of the iPhone saved up, so I know I’ll still have enough emergency money. My parent’s haven’t given me a dime and I am completely funding my discretionary spending, thanks to summer jobs, etc. Previously, I have covered my macbook and other technology as well.
Since I’ve funding myself, my parent’s have given me ambiguous advice, and don’t really care either way.
So, iPhone or no iPhone? iPhone 6s, 6, or 5s? I am looking especially for the perspective of parents.
While also a student - so not an older folk you were asking for - I wouldn’t spend that much on a phone knowing how much that could buy of other things. I’m extremely frugal, to a fault. A lower-rate Android would probably be compatible with your prepaid plan and still do the job. But that’s just how I see things when considering purchases. I also am responsible for my own purchases, not my parents, which makes me personally aware of cost.
I have had an iPhone 5 for 3 years not and see not a single thing that’s wrong with it. You could honestly find a really great iPhone 5 for $200 on craigslist. I’m sure the 5s isn’t much more than that. I’d say the difference isn’t big enough to warrant spending a lot more for a person who cares about saving money.
Many contracts come with VERY discounted prices on the phone itself. Perhaps getting one of those would actually turn out to be less than
Any IPhone will last about 3 years at most, and become consistently slower over that time: no phone is worth the $649. I think a budget of $200 or under plus plan would be much better: you will have to buy again in two years probably, but the same budget will get you a better phone by then, and the total cost will be around $400, $250 less than making such a huge investment in something that will be hard pressed to last all 4 years.
These days, phones are making barely incremental improvements year over year, and they are greatly overpowered for what the average person does with their phone on a daily basis. I’m a pretty heavy user of my smartphone and even I could probably go back a generation or so (I have an iPhone 6).
If you have a MacBook and/or an iPad, and are hooked into the Apple ecosystem, an iPhone is nice. But if you have a Windows computer or a Chromebook, or aren’t overly hooked into Apple, you can get a current gen Android phone for way cheaper than an iOS device. You can buy an unlocked OnePlus 2 for $450, a 32 GB Google Nexus 5X for $429, or a 16 GB Moto X Pure Edition for $400 (and that phone has a microSD slot so you can expand the storage pretty cheaply).
And those are all current gen phones - you could get a lightly used 32GB LG G3 for $288, a 16 GB Galaxy S5 for $230, or a 16 GB HTC One M8 for $170-$290 depending on your wireless provider. (All prices are for currently on-sale phones from Glyde). You can also get a 64 GB iPhone 5S for around $300 on the same website, if you are partial to Apple phones. Amazon also sells some gently used phones through their marketplace, I believe, for discounted prices.
When I was in college, I bought all of my cell phones lightly used from eBay (this was before electronics-specific resellers like Glyde existed). This usually meant I didn’t have the latest and greatest phone, which was a bigger deal back then when phones were improving much more rapidly. But now smartphone improvements seem to have stagnated and companies are doing really minor improvements to their cameras or fingerprint scanners or UI just so they can release a new phone every year or so. Either that, or they are adding more RAM…but do you really need 4 GB of RAM in a smartphone anyway? That’s the same as in a mid-priced computer!
Added note: I know that iPhones have syncing capabilities with MacBooks, but you can do that with Android phones too. I have iCal synced with my Outlook calendar and you can also sync it with a Google calendar. The MightyText app allows you to answer texts, get notifications, and sync photos and videos from an Android phone to any Windows or Mac computer - the same as Continuity with iCloud will do for you. So you don’t have to get an iPhone if you want your phone to play nice with your MacBook, although the experience is a bit more seamless.
My advice: Get something you want to keep for the long term. Don’t skimp on memory. Probably a regular 6. Put a hardcore tough-as-nails case on it, you will get quite a few years out of it.
New smart phones can be had for $100 or less, meant for prepaid use (i.e. no two year lock-in). No need to get a high end phone to talk on the phone, handle text messages, take photos, and browse the web.
Cell phones are small items that are easy to lose. Do you really want to spend that much on a phone? That’s got to be a chunk of your spending money budget.
Look at one plus 2, or the x, paying for branding as a smart savvy college kid is not the way to go. I wouldn’t buy anything old though, as it has been pointed out, improvements now are really quite small, but a 2 yr old phone will behave like it is old.
I just switched to Total Wireless which is available through Wal Mart. I bought the LG Ultimate 2 android phone for $60 and the cheapest plan, $25/month. You can buy data add-on cards… $10 for 1.5 GB. I couldn’t be happier! Spending $600+ on a phone is silly, imo.
Whatever new smartphone you purchase, make sure it’s something you can use and live with for AT LEAST the 3-4 years you intend for it. Nothing worse than skimping or going all out on something which looks flashily nice only to find it’s not as great in everyday usage.
Go out and try out/play with multiple smartphones in the various stores and evaluate them to see which is most suitable to your personal usage/preferences.
4 GB of RAM in a mid-range priced PC would have been true years ago. However, nowadays 4 GB is considered very entry-level on the PC/notebook market.
A friend purchased an entry level notebook with 4 GB of RAM for less than $200 just over a year ago.
I felt he made a huge mistake considering he replaces PCs every 7-10+ years and my own experiences using Windows 7/8/8.1 and beta testing Windows 10 over the last several months on an old 4 GB notebook from 2009**. He’s already complaining about slowdowns at some points due to updates to Windows 8.1 and MS office on his machine. And he’s a very light user. Mainly basic office apps and internet.
Considering the mainstreaming of 64-bit computing in the last few years, 4 GB is now the bare minimum* unless you want your computer to be running like a lombotomized snail on molasses.
Running a 64-bit OS with 4 GB of RAM would be the equivalent of running 2 GB of RAM on a modern(Win Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 32-bit system.
** Gotten from from a client who dumped the machine on me rather than bother with fixing it when he found what it would cost to make the machine compatible with his higher-end computing needs.
Hi everybody–thanks for the input. In the end, I got the Moto G for sub 200. I’m not really a huge phone person in the first place and really rarely use it much during the day let along for scheduling and productivity stuff for which the iPhone is indispensable for some. I never really play games either. The largest problem with the iPhone was that I was only willing to get the 16GB and the storage isn’t expandable, which is a huge bummer. So with these issues and the price, it didn’t make sense for me to get an iPhone.
Another reason I didn’t settle for the 6, is because Apples is looking to be making huge changes to the iPhone, and although i don’t plan to upgrade next year, I wasn’t interested in the feeling like I missed the next big thing. Also upon looking at several reviews and drop tests, the iPhone 6 is just way too fragile to buy it–case or no case. Both the glass screen and body don’t seem durable enough for the duration I would like to keep the phone. The 6s has much improvements with respect to this aspect, but I am not willing to pay the price.
I also have an iPad, so while the compatibility between all three devices would have been nice, I don’t use my iPad or am fixated enough on it that I would see the value of basically getting a smaller version of it which happens to cost more.
Maybe the Nexus 5 would have been a comparable deal, but I’m happy with the Moto for now!