If you’re shopping for a new smartphone it’s easy to get enamoured with the latest and greatest smartphones like the LG G2, Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One to name a few. But, the price o these smartphones pales in comparison to what you will pay for the service of your phone and it’s quite possible that the cost to have your smartphone activated on a network will cost much much more than the cost of the phone, yet everybody tends to get locked into the contract to get a cheap phone when in some cases it may be better to pay full price for the phone outright and shop around for a better deal on your smartphone plan instead. You could save thousands over the course of 2 years.
How Much Money Can You Save?
Take me for example: our household is currently on Verizon and the cost for our service is over $200.00 a month (Verizon only has the Canada calling option which we need). But if I didn’t need to call Canada and use in Canada to call Canada and the US, I could switch to T-Mobile for $50.00 a month. For the both of us, we would save $100 a month. That’s $2400 over the course of 2 years. We could buy our phones at $600 each and STILL be ahead over $600 annually. I just used T-Mobile as a quick example but let’s look at some other Carriers to see what the best price you can get on a smartphone plan:
Cheapest Verizon Smartphone Plan
Verizon’s pricing for smartphones is far from the cheapest option, but they do offer great service for the most part and as I mentioned earlier for me it’s the only option for a Canadian living in the USA. But with Verizon for smartphones you pay $40.00 for the phone line and then you pick a share everything plan you want. The cheapest smartphone plan you can get with this is $80/month with unlimited talk and text and 500mb of data.
Cheapest AT&T Smartphone Plan
AT&T gets a little cheaper than Verizon when you compare the two. With AT&T, for one smartphone and unlimited talk and text will cost you $70.00 and you only get 300mb of data included in that price. AT&T does offer some prepaid plans that are actually better than the 2 year contract prices if you want to bring your own phone or buy one outright and then bring it to AT&T for activation. With AT&T, the Go Phone service can be had for $40.00 a month for unlimited text and 500 minutes of calls with 200mb of data. Not a lot of either call time or data but if you don’t use your phone lots this is the cheapest smartphone plan at AT&T.
Cheapest T-Mobile Smartphone Plan
T-Mobile might just be the cheapest smartphone carrier. T-Mobile is different in that you don’t need to commit to a contract and the cheapest rate they offer is $50.00 a month for unlimited talk and text and 500mb of data. There’s also another even cheaper option from T-Mobile for smartphones that is a bit hard to find. For just $30.00 a month you get 100 minutes, unlimited data with the first 5GB at 4GB speeds and unlimited text. Another choice for just $30.00 a month is 1500 minutes talk and text and just 30mb of data. For smartphones if you don’t need to use your phone a lot when it comes to actual calling the $30.00 a month plan is one of the cheapest smartphone options.
Cheapest Sprint Smartphone Plan
The cheapest smartphone plan from Sprint is $70.00 a month.$50.00 a month for the smartphone line and an additional $20.00 a month for the 1GB of data.
Other Cheap Smartphone Plan Options
There’s also lots of other carriers out there where you can get a pretty good deal on a smartphone plan: Most have no contract and for the most part cost under $50.00 a month. Let’s have a look at a few other choices for cheaper smartphone plans:
Ting
Ting is without a doubt the cheapest smartphone plan you can buy today. If you don’t use your smartphone a lot it’s sure hard to beat $9.00 month for 100 minutes, 100 text messages and 100MB of data.
Straight talk offers unlimited talk and text and 2.5GB of high speed data for just $45.00 a month.
Aio Wireless
Aio Wireless offers plans with unlimited talk and text with 250mb of high speed data for just $40.00 a month.
Virgin Mobile
Virgin mobile offers a pretty cheap smartphone plan for just $35.00 – 300 minutes, unlimited messaging and data. Another great choice if you don’t call a lot.
Boost Mobile
$50 a month for unlimited talk, text and data.
Who has the cheapest smartphone plan?
If you rarely use your phone it’s hard to beat Ting. My next bet would be on T-Mobile and if I could get away with the 100 minutes I would be all over the $30.00 a month plan or if you need more time for calls, the $50.00 a month plan is a good one too but at this price you should also consider Virgin Mobile, Straight Talk, and Aio Wireless and Boost Mobile too as they’re all in the $50.00 window.
It’s a great time to shop for smartphone plans with so many affordable choices.