AppleInsider Staff
As of Tuesday, prepaid carrier Virgin Mobile is now offering Apple's new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c off-contract for $100 less than Apple itself sells the devices.
Virgin Mobile's site lists the 16GB iPhone 5s for $550 off-contract, while the iPhone 5c sells for $450 off contract. The same two devices on Apple's own store sell for $650 and $550, respectively.
Interestingly, the iPhone 5, which arrived on Virgin in June of this year, still sells for $550 off-contract.
Virgin revealed last week that the new iPhones would be landing on its network on October 1, and the availability of the devices on the prepaid carrier may reflect which models are in higher demand from Apple.
The gold iPhone 5s color variant, which sold out quickly on the device's launch date, was listed as Out of Stock for interested Virgin customers when sales of the handset went live. This suggests the carrier was not supplied with the gold color option, or saw such high demand that all stocked units were immediately sold.
Higher-capacity models of both the iPhone 5s (32GB and 64GB) and 5c (32GB) are listed as "Web Only" products, while the yellow color variant of the polycarbonate-backed iPhone 5c is also listed as Out of Stock.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
32 Comments
It's too bad that it's Virgin and not T-Mobile that is offering the unlocked phone for cheaper.
Virgin, which is same network as Sprint I believe, is CDMA. And an unlocked CDMA iPhone is pretty worthless, especially if one intends to travel.
I wonder which network Virgin mobile uses, if its verizon, at&t, sprint or tmobile.
I wonder which network Virgin mobile uses, if its verizon, at&t, sprint or tmobile.
And I wonder if you read my post.
It's too bad that it's Virgin and not T-Mobile that is offering the unlocked phone for cheaper.
I guarantee the Virgin phone is locked. Prepaid phones are still subsidized, though at a lower rate. Looking on their website, do you think a Samsung Entro flip phone really costs $12 including free shipping and retail markup?
I guarantee the Virgin phone is locked. Prepaid phones are still subsidized, though at a lower rate. Looking on their website, do you think a Samsung Entro flip phone really costs $12 including free shipping and retail markup?
I don't know who you are of course, so I don't know how much your guarantees are worth, but the iPhone 5s no contract costs $549 on Sprint. That is not subsidized.