Remember when Sprint said that it would stop offering two-year contracts by the end of 2015? Well it may be a few days into 2016, but Sprint has kept its word.
A newly-leaked internal Sprint document shows that the big yellow carrier is no longer offering two-year contracts to customers. Sprint says that from now on, it’ll only give subsidized smartphones “on a reactive basis to select customers.” That means that the next time you upgrade on Sprint, you’re probably going to have to get your phone on Sprint Lease or Sprint Easy Pay.
One thing to note is that this change apparently only applies to smartphones. Tablets, the doc says, are still eligible to be purchased on two-year contracts.
Just a few years ago, the two-year contract was the way that most every US wireless user bought a new phone. Now T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint have all abandoned the contract, and AT&T will stop offering subsidies starting tomorrow. This means that most folks will have to start buying new phones on installment plans, which will definitely take some getting used to. The good news is that thanks to the burgeoning affordable smartphone market, you can get many solid phones for the same price that you’d previously pay for a subsidized handset that’d lock you into a two-year contract.
