When shopping for a smartphone there’s a few things you need to think about and probably the first thing you should consider the price you will pay for your smartphone (your plan too, but that’s another story). Prices for smartphones will drop over time so you have four choices when looking for your next smartphone.

Sign Up For a Contract and Get a Subsidized SmartPhone

Traditionally, this has been the way to get a phone for the best price. In most cases, the carrier will subsidize the cost of the phone and then hide the fee in the contract somehow (rumored to be about twenty dollars a month). This method allows you to get the lowest price on a brand new smartphone, and in a lot of cases you can get a free phone this way – the cheapest smartphone you can buy. Most carriers offer  this business model but  T-Mobile which features  their uncarrier plan which allows you to bring your own phone or buy a new phone and finance over 24 months  (the math between these two models tends to be about the same). Every smartphone carrier offers free smartphones. These are usually phones that are about to be discontinued or at end of their short lifespan and are about to replaced with newer versions or they are phones that don’t sell as well as they planned.

Buy a Brand New SmartPhone Without  a Contract

Depending on where you live, what carrier you have and what phone you want to buy, this might be the best option for you over the course of a 2 year contract.  You won’t get a a free phone this way but there’s times when you can buy the phone outright and over the lifetime of the contract your savings  could be more than the original cost of the phone which would effectively result in a free phone.

Buy a Used SmartPhone Without a Contract

This is another way to get a cheap smartphone.  When buying a used phone of course, there’s more risk as you want to be sure the phone is compatible with your service is not locked in any way and hasn’t been dropped. The good news is you can buy some really good smartphones for much less than what a current smartphone would cost.

Finance a Smartphone

Fiscally, this makes the least sense. Most carriers now offer some upgrade event that allows you to trade in your phone when you want for a new phone over time. For example, the Verizon EDGE program allows you to get a new phone for about $27.00 a month for a new phone. You could argue that it’s only less than a dollar a day for a new phone but it will take you 2 years to pay it off. You could of course, sell the phone when done to recover some of your payments but if you upgrade and trade your phone often you’re essentially just paying for the use of your phone over time rather than buying it outright. I would prefer to just own my phone or go into a contract and live with the phone than pay constantly for a phone over the years.

All of these methods will allow you to get a cheap smartphone depending on your needs. Most carriers offer free phones on 2 year contracts so if you need to get into a smartphone for no money down this will be the cheapest smartphone. Check Verizon, Sprint and AT&T for current free phone offers.