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Posts: 203 | Thanked: 68 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#10
Originally Posted by Laughing Man View Post
TMobile isn't doing subsidies anymore, now they have this 20 month payment thing where you can pay your phone in 20 installments (though this is dependent on your credit rating and TMobile credit rating if you have been a TMobile customer before).

So it would make sense if they had the break the n900 price into a 20 month installment plan.
That's not correct. On the Even More plans, the phones are subsidized and you can pay for them on a 20-month plan. On the the Even More Plus plans the phones are not subsidized and you can also get the 20-month payment option. And it's the same selection of phones on both types of plans. [Edit: Looks like CaptainGinyu beat me to the punch. Hope my explanation is also useful.]

That aside, it seems like it would have to be T-Mobile for the N900, given the 1700 3G band. There have been a lot of rumors about T-Mobile releasing the N900 already. Of course, to get the subsidy, you'd have to sign up for a two year contract on an Even More plan, which is $20 more per month for the plans with data. So over the two years you'd pay $480 more in the monthly cost of your plan, plus the presumably $199 up front for the device. That means You'd pay a total of $679 extra, which is $100 more expensive that just buying the N900 outright from Amazon and even more expensive than the worst price you can get buying directly from Nokia ($649). This is the great lie of phone subsidies, they're a bad deal for the consumer and the carriers make money on them in the long run.
 

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