As has been mentioned, if you are paying contract subsidized phone monthly rate anyways, you are highly advised to upgrade (even if you get it and just sell the new phone).
A used iPhone 5 is the best way to go. You can even get a new 5S on contract, sell it, and buy a much cheaper 5 which is a nice upgrade over your 4, and the price difference would make it roughly free. Or get a free-on-contract phone, sell it, and keep your 4.
Don't pay contract pricing and get nothing in return, though.... That's not fair to yourself.
Ok I'm new to this whole subsidized/unsubsidized. But if you buy unsubsidized phone, can you transfer to unsubsidized rates? I'm with AT&T.
Well when u put that way it is a no brainer to pick up a new phone every chance. Even to purchase and resell. Thx for the tip.Nope. Only T-mobile does this in the US. For every month that you you are not on a contract, you're basically handing over approximately $20 for free to your service provider.
Yeah, sure, a stripped-down version of iOS 7 works on iPhone 4, but, it doesn't have the same appearance (no parallax, some things are black instead of translucent/transparent), and, considering they have stopped selling this phone, Apple will not necessarily be porting the next iOS on it, next year.
OP: Firstly, do you share your photos, or do others share their photos with you? If so, AirDrop, an iOS 7 feature that will only work on iPhone 5 & newer, makes it super easy to share photos (with others that have AirDrop). (Any iPhone 5 will also have a nicer camera).
You may also notice the iPhone 5 models have better sound for voice calls. And, if you do upgrade, be sure to get a 32GB model, since you have music on your 32GB iPhone 4 now, if you cut back to 16GB, you will be sorry. I have a 16GB iPhone 5 and wish I would have gotten at least 32 as, between my music & photos, it is full, have to archive videos and photos on computer.
You could go with a 5c, considering you won't care about the extra features on 5s. I would wait until you can go to the Apple store or your carrier store and check out the 5c, you might be happy with it. ...as far as prices go, considering Apple sold new iPhone 4's a few days ago at $450 for only 8GB, you should get more than the trade-in value...remember, the trade-in people will take that phone and sell it to make a profit off of it.
One thing you can do is search on ebay for sold iPhone 4's. Look at the 4S also, to compare. People say they get more $ selling iPhones on craigslist, people who will unlock the phone, don't have contract plans will pay you cash for it.
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One thing to keep in mind also...if you don't need the cash, you can keep your iPhone 4 and use it as an iPod touch, for your music.
I have the same phone as OP and have thrown iOS7 on it to test with the option of restoring iOS6 before the window of opportunity closes on the 17th.
Currently, I was considering upgrading because my phone loses its data connection intermittently and cannot reconnect without a reboot. This was annoying enough for me to consider dropping £630 on an upgrade this time round.
So far, so good. No data dropouts. However....
iOS7 is pig ugly. Truly hideous. I haven't followed the iOS7 threads or articles because I didn't really care enough to check. I want my OSes to facilitate operating my apps and then to get out of my way. iOS7, on the other hand, is no shrinking violet. Awful, indistinct fonts, garish colour schemes from hell and the whole thing just looks amateurish. More like a prototype for iOS before given a professional lick of paint. If you thought the icon for Safari was bad wait until you see the small icons at the bottom of the washed out webpages. It really is a visual disaster zone.
Unlike the OP, I find the interface really laggy. iOS6 felt really slick in comparison. I also wonder why the brightness audio controls have disappeared when double clicking the home button to bring up the task manager.
So I'm torn. iOS7 seems to have solved my data problems but I am never going to love the interface the way I appreciated iOS1-6. Also, a couple of my daily apps don't work properly under iOS7. I hope those get fixed soon.
I am inclined at the moment to sit this round out. I can live with what I have for another year at least. It would be a lot of money just to eliminate the lag and I don't think the 5 series phones are as robust. I am hoping for better things for iP6 and iOS8.
Ok I'm new to this whole subsidized/unsubsidized. But if you buy unsubsidized phone, can you transfer to unsubsidized rates? I'm with AT&T.
Actually, my last phone was the iPhone 3GS, I'm not one to upgrade every year. As far as the iPhone 5 goes, it has the A6 processor and is only 1 year old. I think the main reason to discontinue it was a combination of 2 things: LTE/cell chipset was unable to work with a major China mobile carrier and Apple wanted to take a slightly different marketing direction with the iPhone lineup. ...The 5c uses the same A6 processor also, essentially an iPhone 5 with new LTE/cell chipset and a different manufacturing process otherwise. So, even though the iPhone 5 was discontinued, it does all of iOS 7 well, and will get all the updates the 5c will, but, in order to get iOS 7 on the iPhone 4, Apple had to strip most of the bigger features in order to get it on there, and some of the visual ones also. Some people have also said that it runs slow on the 4....BTW Benji... I understand the 4 is 3 years old and Apple has stopped selling it ... But they've done the same thing with the iPhone 5 and we know it'll get more updates ... So just because they've stopped selling it doesn't mean they will stop updating it ... I realize you have an iPhone 5 and probably feel loyal to it, but it's also discontinued... So does it mean it's not going to be updated? No!...