[tempsy]

Phone is very different IMO. I always lease my phone not because I can’t afford to buy it outright but because the upgrade cycle is so short (a year with iPhones) that if you are someone who likes having a new phone then it makes more sense to just lease one and upgrade whenever you want than to buy it and deal with the hassle of selling it later on.

The equation has changed more recently as smartphone innovation has really slowed and very incremental. In either case you can just keep you phone for 18 mo and buy it outright.

[scarface74]

Leasing is different than what the phone companies are doing now. They just take the retail price of the phone and divide it over 24 or 36 months if you want to cancel your included service contract early, you pay off the remaining balance of your phone. They often allow trade ins or upgrades as an option, but there is functionally no different from 0% financing 24 months with a phone + service plan than 0% financing + subscription with Peleton.

I have a 128GB iPhone 6s from 2015 that my son is still using and will at least get the current version of iOS through September 2020. Phones have been “good enough” since the 2013 iPhone 5s.