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Ask Slashdot: Is Leasing a Smartphone Better Than Buying One? (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The biggest benefit with a lease program is you have the option of upgrading to a newer phone model, usually after just a year. You don't get that option when you buy. But with a lease program, although it may be cheaper, you have to return the phone at the end of the agreement or when you upgrade -- meaning you can't pass it off to your child or sell it. So rather than leasing, buying may be a better option. But a New York Times column makes case for why leasing is the right way to go about it. I wanted to check with Slashdot readers, what do you prefer and why?
...because phones, like cars, come out with new models every year. It really depends on the person, and how in tune with the cutting edge of technology one is.
At this point, it is too little, too late. Phones are not changing frequently enough to really need to upgrade all that often anymore. Being on the Galaxy S5 right now and looking at the S8, there is only marginal increases over the past three years. Sure, it has a little more processing power, a little more RAM, and a little more storage, but that isn't all that needed.
If you don't care about your money it is great.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Lease or buy? Are we serious with this shit?
When a phone gets so fucking expensive I have to debate whether to lease or buy it, it's time to buy a cheaper phone.
Sadly, many people feel otherwise, and will sacrifice a lot in order to maintain the "celebrity" status of owning fashionable hardware.
My phone is 4-5 years old and still works great. I'm paying less than if I had a new phone (with a balance on it) considering the same plan for both. How is constantly paying for the phone better than not constantly paying for the phone? Phones today don't change enough to warrant the getting of the next model, unless you like throwing away your money or want to be seen with the latest technology. In that case you are materialistic and that's that.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
I always buy outright. Never borrow money or rent. With leasing, someone is providing you with a service over and above the simple purchasing of a thing, and you'll pay for that service. Save money by buying.
Like the subject says, in almost all use case scenarios consumer leases are a scam. They great for the leasor, who gets a constant cash flow because most consumers can't afford or are unwilling to pay the buyout at the end of the lease, and thus create a perpetual rental situations.
It's different for businesses, because while actually purchasing a capital asset means you can only write off the asset via depreciation, which can take a few years even for a phone, a lease is a regular write off. Unless your self-employed, and thus can gain some benefit from the monthly write off of the lease, it's better just to buy the bloody phone, either outright (which is what I do, I don't do phone contracts) or as part of a contract.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They're missing a very important part of the equation in that many phones these days are good enough to last for at least four years. I suppose there's some reason to be pessimistic about that if you have one of the Android handsets that isn't going to get updated after a year to two, or if the newest version of iOS makes your older iPhone incredibly sluggish, but from a financial point of view you end up saving a lot of money over leasing.
If you make the flawed assumption that a phone is only good for two years, then it doesn't really matter if you pay $700 up front or a monthly payment of $30 to lease it. However, if you keep that same $700 phone for 4 years, then the monthly cost goes down to under $15 when you stretch the cost out like that. So unless you're the type of person that just has to have a shiny new device every year, leasing isn't necessarily your best option.
FTFA :-
... there is a certain comfort to always having the latest.
That's a givaway - it's an entirely emotive reason, just wanting shiny. I don't give a shit. I have a dumb phone that's about 7 years old and I'll use it until either it fails or they change the network technology.
If you lease, your option, if you want, to "do with it as you please" can be or may be limited. Can you root it? Can you install a custom rom without the block/lockdown/features removed? Plus, leasing will most likely be more expensive than outright purchasing it. Also, it puts you on an endless treadmill. Granted, if you are one of those that "has to have a new one every year", leasing it probably better for you, but, I typically buy a new phone, AFTER a new one comes out, then buy last years new model, typically for 1/2 of the price, keep it 1-2 years, then do it all over again. Less expensive, I can sell/trade/give the old one away.
If you just don't care about money why not buy a new phone every year outright? Heck you could by a Galaxy S[n] in the spring and a Note [n] in the fall and have two new phones per year.
It is all about how much you are willing to spend. I'm willing to spend $700 for a phone every other year ($900 price - $200 trade in) because I think it takes 2 years for a phone to start having glitches and after 2 years there are usually new features I am interested in. I'm not willing to pay $1200 every other year ($1800 price - $600 trade ins) which is closer to what leasing would cost me. But there is probably a yearly income I could reach which would entice me to get a new phone every year.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
If you can't afford a $1000 phone outright, you can't afford a $1000 phone, period. No matter how you finance/lease it.
Sane personal/family financial planning should allow you to save in order to be able to afford that phone, or simply choose a less expensive phone to begin with.
I like owning things, vs perpetually renting them.
If you can manage to not drop your phone on concrete and break it, there is no reason to buy a new phone until the manufacturer stops issuing software updates.
Which, unless it's iPhone, is a max of 3 years (the last year of which only security updates).
Yeah, sadly they are, or, instead of them being called slim, sexy, stylish, in designer colors, they would be a black slab of glass, plastic, metal with a LARGER battery, and a CHEAPER price, but, because they make them "status symbol-ish", we're stuck with phones that are so thin, you can easily bend/break them, have small batteries, and stupid expensive prices. Heck, it amazes me, you can walk in a mall, or around a college campus, and 3/4 of the people? Are they carrying it in a bag or case? Nope, gripped in their hands. I think that they need to splice some DNA and alter people to have a 3rd arm. The normal 2, plus a "cell phone" hand LOL.
My understanding is that with randomization of allocated blocks in NAND, it can be quite difficult to ensure that the memory is cleanly deleted. Forget the CIA do you want to trust your poorly deleted phone in the hands of a 16 year old hacker?
I think a lot of the reason the removable battery, is due to them turning a useful device, into a fashion accessory. Now, we have to have "dazzling colors", "slim & stylish". With that "slim" part, they had to remove the plastic shell that protects the battery from damage, to squeeze as much as possible into the slim design (Note 7). Also, removing the shell of the battery, allows for an even more thin design, removing the connections for the removable battery. Until this obsession with the PHONE being a fashion icon is over, don't look for them to gain some weight for a while.
Leasing is always more expensive than buying. Rental is the base of a feodal system, etc. etc.
I'm planning to buy my leased iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
I prefer to wait until someone I know ditches his current phone for a newer one and gives me the old one for free.
#DeleteFacebook
If all you do is run the latest apps, sure. Otherwise they still work fine.
#DeleteFacebook
I'm surprised by how many commenters here are saying they're fine using a several year-old phone. I get a new one every year (currently Pixel XL), but my employer pays for it. I would have thought many (if not most) of the tech workers at /. would be in the same boat.
I made a spreadsheet and compared my options, leasing through Apple, leasing through AT&T or buying it outright. Here's what I discovered, if you're buying the AppleCare plan they're all the same price. Apple's lease came with AppleCare, the other two did not. If you're like me, and hang on to an iPhone for two years since AT&T dropped the early upgrade option then you're going to need AppleCare because iPhones always break in some way within that first year. But here's the best part, I pitted AT&T against Apple, got to avoid the upgrade cost (which is total BS) and got free cases for all the phones I upgraded. Now I originally got the iPhone 3G, paid a down payments andand got an AT&T plan, then every year I would be eligible for an upgrade, but you didn't have to turn your phone in back then, it was the phone with a contract plan. I would then sell my old phone and use that to pay the down payment on the new one. Eventually AT&T offered a $15 discount if you were no longer on a contract. So it made it worthwhile to buy a phone.
I used to give a shit about the latest and greatest and spent accordingly. Then I came to my senses and realized I could pay half price for top of the line phones a year old. So I buy my phone at half off, then run it for a few years till it gets twitchy, then upgrade to another used handset. I also gave up on contracts a long time ago, too, and have saved thousands as a result. My bill runs around $30/month and I have a fairly recent Android model. All phones now are pretty much a rectangle with rounded corners that goes in a case, so unless you are a phone geek they pretty much look exactly the same as the other. There also hasn't been a truly compelling differentiating feature in years. They all pack similar storage, you can get decent cameras on a lot of models, fingerprint readers, etc, etc.
I have the same philosophy for cars, I get them off lease and drive them into the ground, then repeat. I drive the miles I want to and enjoy not having a eternal payment. I also cut cable for similar reasons and generally try to avoid anything that has recurring payments, preferring to pay up front whenever possible.
If you're thinking about handing the phone down to your kids, you're going to see the phone differently than the do. You see it as a lifeline. They'll see it as a casual gaming and social media terminal.
And here's the problem with that: you run afoul of the finite lifespan of li-ion batteries. Flagship phones these days are built to be thin as possible, and that means when the battery life starts going south, you've got to replace them or avoid using them too much. Basically a phone with non-replaceable battery is like a nice, fresh fish left out on a summer's day. It won't stay nice and fresh long.
Generally speaking I think lease makes more sense if that's an option. If you do buy with the idea of handing it down either (1) get one of the few remaining phones with a removable battery or (2) consider the moto series which an take auxillary battery packs or (3) get a phone with ridiculously good battery life and hand it off while it is still relatively new.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Since I avoid replacing my cell phone for as long as possible, leasing doesn't make any sense for me at all.
As I've said more than a few times around here I just don't give a shit about the latest shininess consumer hardware. I can't find any use AT ALL for most of the latest features they try to push. I just use my debit card or cash for all purchases, I don't use the cloud, I don't use any 'fitness apps', I hate all mobile games (PC gamer), and both audio and video quality are so bad on most phones to just be annoying.
Maybe they're just fine for all of you people, but I've got too much serious work to do that I can't really be bothered trying to order my life so I can be bothered to live by a phone. And that's before we even get into the real serious security problems that all smartphones have.
With the lease, the Phone MUST be in resellable condition. So if you drop it, have scratches, etc, they may not take the phone back to upgrade. Also, even though it is a "Lease", they still treat it as if it is YOUR phone, especially with the fact that newer phones are so expensive. I have had a lot better experience just buying the phones over the last 4 years now.
Scott Carr
I know this is the opposite of the advice that was forced upon us by realtors and bankers but don't forget where they each made their money (both before and after the housing bubble burst). Buy the items that you are going to consume - all the way from your lunch to your car - and lease the items that should still be there when you're done using them (your house). Anything else and you're going to lose even more money.
You don't use up your car, you say? Then you're doing it wrong. You should keep your car running until it doesn't have a useful life left to it (once you have run in to a mandatory repair that is significantly more expensive than the market value of said car), and then scrap it and start over. You can do the same with a phone, but not with a house. Going this way you should have many years with a car where you have finished paying for it and all that is left is maintenance costs; the vast majority of people with mortgages won't live long enough to reach that point on a house.
Even worse, the mortgage holds you down geographically. You can take your car - even if you took out a loan to purchase it - and move to another state with it. You can't do that with a house; instead you have to sell it at a loss and you end up taking your new debt to another state with you.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you know your use case, then it's a good idea. For example, as a self-employed person, you would write off a phone rental as a business expense, keeping that expense predictable, and never having to worry about the headache of depreciation. I'm sure that there are other use cases out there.
No, because if ANYTHING happens to the phone during that year, you're totally at the lessor's mercy. They can charge you the full original MSRP (and probably a penalty on top) if the phone gets lost/stolen/broken during the year, or if you return it in less than shrinkwrap-pristine condition (their official definitions of "normal wear & tear" almost certainly deviates from YOUR understanding of what it means). And if you DO need to buy a replacement at some point during the year, there's usually a clause requiring that you purchase that replacement FROM THEM, at WHATEVER PRICE THEY DICTATE... if you bought an identical replacement from Amazon or Newegg, they'd be entitled to refuse it (since the phone's serial number wouldn't match the serial number of the one they sent you), charge you some inflated shipping & handling fee to send the refused phone back to you, AND charge you their official inflated replacement price (plus some penalty) anyway. The fact that they're probably going to turn around and sell the returned phones to someone like Asurion for $10/pound as scrap doesn't matter... there's almost certainly a mandatory arbitration clause, and you'd spend 100 times the phone's purchase price on a lawyer attempting to PROVE it to the arbiter.
With consumer-item leases, the deck is totally and hopelessly 100% stacked against you. Sure, you might get lucky... but if you lose the dice roll, you're going to be in a world of pain by the time they're finished throwing arbitrary penalties at you. Especially if there's no language allowing you to purchase the item at the end of the lease.
If you truly intend to keep the phone for a year, buy it outright, then sell it yourself using swappa.com, craigslist, or ebay after buying your new one. At least then, you'll be able to fix it if it breaks, and buy replacements from whomever gives you the best deal, instead of being totally at the lessor's mercy.
Just to give you a small idea of how evil some companies can be, after Hurricane Wilma, I got a letter that was sent to me by mistake by Enterprise Rent-a-Car (I'd rented a car from them a few weeks earlier, and their loss department fucked up and sent the letter to me by mistake) demanding the immediate payment of almost $7,000 for damage to a rental car caused by flooding (Wilma caused extensive flooding in Miami). Anyway, they admitted it was sent to me by mistake, but what I'll never forget was the first paragraph of the letter, which basically said, "the Loss Damage Waiver doesn't include coverage from flooding", then conceded in the next sentence that the language in the brochure might have been "confusing" since it implied "total coverage" (you know, the usual excuse of corporate America... "total" on the marketing materials means "total coverage for what we decide it covers, subject to any exclusions incorporated by reference into the fine print of Article VIII, section c(iii), page 84, on file with the state Department of Commerce). A few months later, I remember seeing a story on the evening news about thousands of complaints filed by consumers against rental car companies who tried doing that exact thing. From what I recall, the state eventually ruled against most of the rental car companies, but the only penalty was that they had to eat the loss and refund any amount already paid. In other words, it was a totally safe gamble for them... "heads they would have won, tails they merely broke even".
there is no reason to buy a new phone until the manufacturer stops issuing software updates.
And even that's not a great reason. You can always put your own up-to-date OS on the phone. No need to rely on manufacturers.
A 3 yr old cell phone is basically useless.
How so? My cell phone is over 4 years old now, and it is no less useful now than the day I bought it.
Or you can be like me and just keep buying inexpensive unlocked ones, then breaking them accidentally every 9 months or so.
Samsung J1 $140 CDN works just fine and if I break it once a year no big deal.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Regardless of how well you take care of any given device, the battery is definitely going to die after 2-3 years. It will start to drain quickly for about 4-6 months and then one day you'll pull it off of that overnight charge and only have 18% left. Happened to me. Most devices have non-replaceable batteries. You CAN replace them but you have to use all sorts of specialized tools to do it and the phone won't be the same again.
You don't get top-of-the-line specs or features, but you have to ask yourself - does it really matter?
If that's the kind of person you are, and you have to have the latest and hopefully greatest, then you've pretty much made your own decision and you're willing to be parted with your money for techno-cred.
Personally, I like control over my phone went with an unlocked BLU Life One X for $150. It has been pretty darn good, and they even did an update to the OS earlier this year which was shocking! Maybe I got lucky in that there hasn't been any spyware that I've found so far, but it's not a carrier phone which in my experience hasn't ever been good.
But, I am that way with lots of things, I just don't see the benefit of being on the bleeding edge of things.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"The biggest benefit with a lease program is you have the option of upgrading to a newer phone model, usually after just a year. You don't get that option when you buy. "
Sure you are, you just sell the old one on ebay and buy another one, but you actually have to _buy_ it, not use the ripoff 'buying' that the providers use.
Why not just get a phone that does what you need, at a decent price, instead of getting the latest and greatest, at an extortionate price, which you do not need anyway for anything other than showing everybody how cool and rich you are? Let me rephrase that: to show everybody how pathetically stupid you are?
The answer is simple to anyone who puts any critical thought into it. You buy a used phone that's one year old and sign up for a pre-paid plan. If you want the new shiny, lease, but I like my new shiny in the form of currency in the bank (or invested properly where it turns into more shiny). I like buying things that go up in value, not down. So I drive a $2000 (reliable) car and use a 3-year old phone. I'll replace either one when they stop working.
Any good financial adviser will tell you to pay cash for everything and never lease or borrow money for anything with the exception of your house. Despite what people may tell you, when you have no payments for anything, it's real easy to pay cash for things, even cars.
My four year old Nexus 5 runs all current protocols and software. It's paid for so it costs me nothing. You'll still paying to lease your phone.
I'll buy a new phone when they give me a good reason... updated protocols, etc. Until then, it's as good as anything out there.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
All right, I'll move off your lawn. I'll find someone who doesn't think their personal preferences are what the entire world should do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It totally depends on the plan.. and the terms, etc.
I leased an LG G4 from Sprint for 26 months. A 24 month lease plus two extra months that I kept on making the payment..
My total cost was $100.72 including the fair market buyout of $22.72
I got a $15 credit every month I payed on the lease including the two months I payed after the lease expired.
I recently tried to lease the Essential phone from Sprint. The terms were totally different:
- no fair market buyout
- A smaller credit only good for 18 months
THe bottom line if i kept the Essential phone for 24 months it would end up costing me $465 far cheaper than the selling price of $699 but more than 4 x more expensive than my LG G4.
Here is my blog post about my LG G4 lease: http://www.talkingabouteveryth...
PS
If you keep your phone in a very strong case and at the end of the lease you can turn-in your phone with zero damage -- you don't have to worry about the buyout. I don't like smart phone cases and so I do worry that I can't actually turn in the phone "and walk away."
http://www.hawknest.com/
I think that's one word. Just buy used. I've gotten about 10 phones there as my wife has a "phone breaking subscription". I had more Nexus 5's than the five, by far.
I also buy cars used, 30K miles or so (Enterprise cars are very well maintained, , well priced; but potentially abused, just avoid the sports cars).
BlameBillCosby.com
Stick phone, free (back when that was a thing), had it for years.
Samsung "Blade", offered 3G unlimited internet for $30/month back in the mid-2000s, replaced it just last year, not because anything was wrong with it, I just wanted to play Pokemon Go.
Grand total of ALL the phones I've spend money on over the past two decades? About $400.
One was top of the line, next nearly so and perfect for my use.
Why does everyone have to have the latest, greatest, top-of-the-line phone?
I have a year-old Moto G. I paid $200 for it, unlocked. It's got the latest version of Android, a good camera, plenty of RAM and CPU. I've never had problems with an app running sluggishly. As far as I can tell, it performs as well as my friends' top-of-the-line phones.
I have NO IDEA why anyone needs to pay $800 for a smartphone!
If you can restrain yourself and buy something less than the priciest model, you won't have to decide whether to lease or buy.
I think leasing is a good option if you are frequently change phone other then go with buying. Personally I always preferred to buy.
Whatever the financial case for leasing, I don't like the idea of something highly personal that I rely on, such as a mobile phone, being at the mercy of the network. Leasing is not much different from a contract in that regard. If I was actually interested in upgrading frequently, and it was leasing from someone other than the network, then the idea might have some merit.
But I like the simplicity of the device I use being a thing I own outright, and having the option of easily and cheaply dumping my network for a new one if they bugger things up badly enough or screw me over.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How would a normal consumer know if they are trading in more than just their phone? People that rent smart cars constantly forget to ensure they aren't leaving private data behind.
I don't trust any capability to completely wipe a phone. So I wouldn't lease it and then have to return it. But that also means I wouldn't sell my phone or hand it down to someone.
I follow the same principle with disk drives: once I put real data on them, I don't return them (even for warranty) unless everything has been encrypted.
Hmm. This sounds extremely sketchy. The first thing I do with my android devices phone is root them and install a 3rd party build, usually LineageOS ( http://lineageos.org ) That protects me from at least some kinds of Carrier Fuckery, like Carrier IQ ( http://mashable.com/2011/12/01/carrier-iq/#hc ) and OEM fuckery, ( http://www.techradar.com/news/beware-these-android-phones-sent-texts-other-sensitive-info-to-a-server-in-china ) . Of course, Apple users are not immune either ( http://bgr.com/2011/04/20/apple-recording-storing-gps-position-of-iphone-3g-ipad-users-video/ ).
This does not of course protect me from network analysis or spying on the data streams coming in and out of my phone, and the Radio software is a hot mess of proprietary code and horrid security practices. But at least I can push back a little bit. Rooting the device also means that I have complete control over what is on it -- I am territorial about my bits.
I have trouble imagining that anyone would lease me a phone and allow me to hack it in this way. Buying used or reconditioned gear seems like a much more sensible course of action.
Not a web designer.