AT&T iPhone6 Upgrade: 2-Year contract vs. Next plans
If you are getting ready to upgrade to iPhone6 through AT&T, you might be in for a surprise or two. The first surprise is that back in July of last year, AT&T changed its phone upgrade eligibility date from 20 months to 24 months.
Using a 2-year contract option, this change most likely means that you did not qualify for an iPhone6 pre-order last Friday, and will probably have to wait till after September 19th’s official release to place your upgrade order. If you are not willing to wait, you can pay AT&T an upgrade surcharge ($40 if your upgrade date is later this month) to upgrade immediately.
Alternatively, you can take a completely different route, and go with a Next 12 or Next 18 installment plans and forget about service contracts and early termination fees altogether. At first glance, it’s pretty hard to follow AT&T’s case for the Next plans.
In this post I will present my own calculations and conclusions pertaining to different scenarios when either a 2-year contract or one of the two Next plans works better. Since Samsung Galaxy S5 is offered at the same price as iPhone6, these calculations will work for all of the Android lovers out there as well.