Is it cost-effective to buy the iPhone 18 Pro series short or to bundle it? First look at your original monthly rental fee

Is it cost-effective to buy the iPhone 18 Pro series short or to bundle it? First look at your original monthly rent. (Photo/Reuters)

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro series will officially go on sale this Friday, September 18. Many people will fall into the trap of buying short phones or whether it is more cost-effective to contract with telecom. 3C expert Tim will teach you how to calculate this account.

Just because a mobile phone is cheap doesn’t mean you really save money. Let’s first factor in the difference in monthly rent.

Brother Tim shared a simple algorithm in a previous video: "The true cost of purchasing a mobile phone = mobile phone project price + (new monthly rent - original monthly rent) × number of contract months." Simply put, if you want to get a lower mobile phone price, you have to increase the original monthly rent, and the extra monthly rent should actually be included in the purchase cost.

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Taking this year’s iPhone 18 Pro 256GB as an example, Apple’s empty model costs 44,900 yuan. The monthly rent of the three major telecommunications companies is 1,399 yuan, and the price of mobile phone projects with a 36-month contract is all 26,300 yuan.

If you are a 1,399 yuan user, the algorithm is the simplest. Since the monthly rent has not increased, the actual purchase cost is 26,300 yuan. Compared with the 44,900 yuan empty machine, it is equivalent to a saving of 18,600 yuan.

An increase from 599 yuan to 1,399 yuan may seem like a saving, but after all calculation, it will cost you tens of thousands of yuan more.

However, if you originally only used the 599 yuan plan and upgraded to 1,399 yuan, you would have to pay an additional 800 yuan per month, which is a total of 28,800 yuan more in 36 months. Add in the 26,300 yuan mobile phone project price, and the actual purchase cost becomes 55,100 yuan, which is 10,200 yuan more than the 44,900 yuan empty phone.

Switching to users who originally rented for 999 yuan a month, the situation is different. The increase from 999 yuan to 1,399 yuan is an increase of 400 yuan per month, and a total increase of 14,400 yuan in 36 months. After adding the 26,300 yuan mobile phone project price, the actual cost is 40,700 yuan, which is still 4,200 yuan less than buying an empty machine directly for 44,900 yuan.

In other words, for the same monthly rent of 1,399 yuan and a 36-month contract, the results may be completely opposite for different users. If you originally used the low monthly rent of 599 yuan, and upgraded to the mobile phone project price of 26,300 yuan, you may end up spending more than 10,000 yuan more than the original phone. But if you are a user with 999 yuan or 1,399 yuan, it is relatively easy to make a deal.

If we extrapolate further, based on the iPhone 18 Pro 256GB empty model costing 44,900 yuan and the project price of 26,300 yuan, the total allowable additional monthly rental cost during the 36-month period is 18,600 yuan, which is about 517 yuan per month on average. In other words, the original monthly rent is about 882 yuan or more. After it rises to 1,399 yuan, the overall cost will not be higher than buying a short machine.

Empty flight or contract? The key is actually how much your original monthly rent was

Therefore, it can be simply understood as follows: users with an original price of 999 yuan or above have a better chance of saving when the price rises to 1,399 yuan than if they buy the phone empty; users with low monthly rents of 599 yuan and 799 yuan need to figure it out first. Therefore, whether you choose a free phone or a contract, what really affects the result is often not which telecommunications company is cheaper by a few hundred yuan, but how much your original monthly rent is.

During the actual purchase, there are also discounts such as old-for-new, VIP discounts, credit card rewards, and value-added services, and the final price may be lowered. However, if you simply compare "empty phone" and "telecommunications contract", first factoring in the original monthly rent and the additional cost after the upgrade will be more accurate than just looking at the mobile phone project price.

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