Early upgrade to iPhone (~13 mo remaining)

[Pandamonium]

So I'm thinking about upgrading to the rumored iPhone4 revision coming at the end of the month. The problem is I have a Samsung Solstice that I got almost a year ago on a 2yr renewal. (Could be more than a year, my memory is a little fuzzy.)

I'm doing some googling and it looks like the "correct" way is to pay an ETF and then buy the iphone4 at the subsidized price. And it looks like a "workaround" is to get transferred to retentions and hope they'll offer rebates to cover the ETF or subsidized iphone so that you basically end up just paying the same as if you were out of contract.

Is this accurate?

 

[pm]

We'll see if this rumored hardware change to resolve the antenna issue really comes at the end of Sept...

So you are saying the cheapest price on the iPhone 4 from AT&T is to call them up, tell them you are leaving AT&T, pay the ETF, and then re-sign up with AT&T, pay the activation and then the subsized price? And the second idea is to hope that they offer to transfer you to retentions and see what they will offer you?

For me, I have 6 months until I can renew. An iPhone 4 16GB shows up as $400. The subsidized price is $200. Your ETF is $120 ($175-11*$5), activation is $36. So, yeah, it's better to go this route. And if you can get the retention guys to help you out then it is definitely better to go this method. Even without retention, they often will waive activation - and if so then it starts to get quite a bit cheaper to go this method.

 

[Pandamonium]

Well that's what I was able to gather from 30mins or so of sifting through various google queries. I was hoping a fellow ATer with more experience in this kind of situation might have some advice to share.

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

I don't know if this will help you or not but I was able to upgrade to an iphone4 with 18 months left on my contract. Yes, 18 months. I went in ready to buy the captivate at full price but was told that I can upgrade my line when he checked my account. Don't know how that happened, but I ended up returning the captivate for the iphone4.

 

[basslover1]

I'm not sure if this will work with AT&T but it's something to inquire about. My sister has Verizon and last summer she picked up a Voyager IIRC. Fast forward to this summer when the Droid X was released, she was able to do a 2-year extension and get the phone for 199 + a 30 dollar charge for upping one year early.

229 is probably cheaper than canceling, paying the ETF then re-signing. Another thing to think about is that doing it that way (ETF route) you'd probably lose your number. Might not be a big deal to you, but I've had my cell number for 8 years, so if it were me I'd really want to keep it.