Tag: smartphones

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iOS 13 Looks Amazing. Now I Want an iPhone by Josh Hendrickson (howtogeek.com)
several iPhones displaying different features in dark mode. Apple Apple’s iOS 13 looks like a fantastic update. It includes a real solution to robocalls, privacy improvements, Android-style power user features, and many fixed annoyances. After spending my smartphone years with Android and Windows...

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I am a gadget enthusiast, so when T-Mobile announced their JUMP program a year ago, it caught my attention. If you haven’t heard of it, the program allows you to trade in your device after 6 months for a new one. It also offers insurance on the device. From the outside, it looks like a ripoff. Here’s why it’s not.

A flagship phone will cost you around $650. If you get it through T-Mobile, you are paying $0 down and $27/month. JUMP costs $10/month, so after 6 months, you have paid $162 for the phone, and $60 for insurance1. T-Mobile pays the difference, regardless of the condition, and you walk away with a new phone.

Doing this on your own will cost you $600-700 up front, plus the time to sell a device (and ship it to the buyer). And if it breaks in that 6 months, you are on the hook for repairs or a replacement.2 You may get slightly more than the 75%3 of the price T-Mobile “pays” for it, but not enough to offset the streamlined transaction and insurance.

The real issue is whether it is prudent to upgrade a phone every 6 months. Probably not, but right now the HTC One hits some checkmarks4 that my Nexus 5 did not, and I’ve already paid for the JUMP, so I am pulling that trigger as soon as I am eligible.

  1. I’m not sure about other insurance plans, but T-Mobile also covers theft and loss. Basically, you are paying to always have a phone. ↩
  2. I have been down this road, about a week after paying in full for the phone. Then it is another 1-2 weeks before it comes back from Samsung. You never need that insurance until you do. ↩
  3. If you are not grandfathered in, they only pay half the cost of the phone. It is basically the same story, just over 1 year instead of 6 months. ↩
  4. Battery, external storage, tap to wake. ↩

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In a spare, drab office park in Sunnyvale, California, a bunch of two-by-fours and foamboard have been nailed together into a makeshift model of a shipping container. Inside, a bare, unlit Edison bulb hangs from a wire, over some simple IKEA furniture and a table with Lego blocks on it….

Building blocks: how Project Ara is reinventing the smartphone
from Pocket via IFTTT