Getting ready to upgrade my iPhone

After seeing the dermatologist this morning, on the way home I dropped into the store operated by my mobile phone service provider and asked about the kinds of packages they offer for people who want to upgrade their iPhone.

I've had my iPhone 4 since 2010 and it has given me good service but I find that the manufacturer is not upgrading the operating system any more and I expect to find in future there will therefore be more and more applications that are incompatible with my phone. Another shortcoming with the model I own is that the battery life is not that good. I know from anecdotal evidence that more recent models have much greater storage capacity in their batteries.

The woman at the counter gave me a sheet of paper that details what's included in each package, and she wrote the monthly charge on the paper for each package. I asked her to give me prices for the phone with the biggest storage capacity, which is the one with 128GB of storage. I calculated the total cost over the lifetime of the contract - a contract lifetime of 24 months - and then deducted the cost of the same iPhone 6S as priced by Apple, and it came out to a difference that was about the same as what I currently pay the service provider per month. This tells me that the charge for the purchase of the phone from the service provider is realistic.

I plan when I do upgrade the phone to donate the old phone to a friend who lives on a restricted income and has never been able to afford an iPhone, so right there will be another good outcome from the upgrade, as well as it giving me access to a superior device that I can continue to use for the next 5 or 6 years.