Best deals on prepaid iPhone?

[Numo]

Daughter is looking for a relatively inexpensive iPhone without a contract. Walmart has this phone for StraightTalk for $300: http://www.walmart.com/ip/33152931?u1=Vm...NlSUFBQUI1&oid=368707.1&wmlspartner=NKa3hZyYoHA&sourceid=24569091113175328895&affillinktype=10&veh=aff

Is this a good deal? Is buying a last generation iPhone to save money a bad idea?

[michaelb]

I just got a 5s for my daughter and will give it to her tonight. I looked at that and think it is a good deal. but it is not unlocked, and so you have to use a year of straight talk service under contract before they would release you, and it wasn't entirely clear to me how that would work. But I use straight talk for my iPhone and it has been fine as a plan, it seems to use tracfone as a service mostly on ATT towers.

For my kids, I am going with H20 wireless, since that seems like the cheapest plan, so $27 a month including unlimited texting. I bought her a so called "new" "refurburbised" 5s on Amazon; definite risk doing that, and I am not sure it is works properly yet since we haven't used it. It was bit confusing setting it up and getting the H20 service running because the phone I got has a sticker on the back saying it is a verizon phone, which it is not.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD53...ls?ie=UTF8&me=

Note the price of that is bouncing a lot, it was $319 yesterday and I paid $350 last week, so got ripped off. If sprint or t mobile work in your area they could also be cheap (they don't work round here).

[Ombligo]

By a used one on Swappa and put in the sim of your choice (my son uses Straight Talk in his)

[what4]

I'm a fan of Cricket (uses AT&T), because of the combination of relatively cheap data and excellent coverage. $55 a month for unlimited talk and text, plus 10 GB/mo of data.

There are cheaper plans with less data.

FWIW, Cricket limits download speeds to 8 Gbps and officially allows tethering only on selected phones purchased directly from them.

[Bill in NC]

Bought the kids a couple of 32GB iPhone 5c models, in different colors, for around $200 each.

[illustratton]

I'm using H20 wireless with my iPhone 6 +, uses AT&T network and spend about $12-16 a month talktime, text and Data. My needs are simple. Works great, the only annoyance is the ding everytime telling me I've just spent $0.05 on a text or call.

Now who is going to tell me it's silly to buy a $1000. phone, but use a cheap pay as you go service?!

[Bimwad]

H2O is a little skimpy on their data allotments, but they don't throttle, and just started rollover data.