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Sprint will lease you a Samsung Galaxy S5 for $20 a month

Sprint’s new leasing program will let you pick up a Galaxy S5 or GS5 Sport for nothing down, with 24 months of $20 payments.
By
October 31, 2014
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Right now Sprint already offers contract-plans, the ability to buy outright and an “easy pay” installment plan, but for those looking for more options — you can now add leasing to the list. Well, at least if you want a Samsung Galaxy S5.

Sprint’s new lease program for the S5 or S5 Sport lets you pick up either phone for nothing down (iPhone 6 is also eligible), but you’ll have to pay $20 a month for 24 months. After that, you can turn it in for another device, pay the remaining balance to own it or cancel the lease program and hand the phone back in. It’s worth noting that existing customers that sign up starting today (and running through Jan) will get an additional $15 month credit each month until January 15th, but after that the pricing will go back up to $20.

So is this a good deal? In most cases, probably not. Doing some basic math, you end up paying $480 (slightly less than that if an existing customer) for the phone and then you have to trade it back in. Right now the phone is listed at $649 outright — so that’s only a difference of $169, and with buying outright you actually own it and can resell it somewhere like Swappa and more than likely (even after two years) you’ll get somewhere between $120 – $160 for it anyway. With owning outright, you can also move on quicker than 24 months, if you so choose.

We can’t help but think this plan would be more appealing if the lease period was much smaller and more phones were included, so folks could pay $20 a month but trade to the latest every 4 to 6 months. For folks that like being on the bleeding edge, the lease program might be worth any negative trade-offs just for the bragging rights of always having the best. Still, we suppose having more options isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

What do you think of this lease program, a good idea or just another way to take advantage of customers that don’t carefully pay attention to terms, conditions and pricing?