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iPhone Air Discounts Continue With Up to $200 Off in Best Buy Flash Sale

sw1tcher said:
Really makes you wonder how it's selling. Did Apple or retailers like Amazon and Best Buy ever discount the iPhone mini or iPhone Plus models without requiring the buyer to sign up for an overpriced unlimited carrier plan or do 36 month bill credits? This has to be a first.
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Selling very poorly seems the only likely explanation.
 
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sw1tcher said:
The article doesn't say you have to sign up for a plan...



... just that you have to activate the iPhone Air through either Verizon or AT&T. For those who don't have Verizon or AT&T (i.e. they have T-Mobile or an MVNO), they only get $100 off instead of $200.

I understand this to be similar to how Apple charges $30 more if the buyer wants to activate and connect to a carrier later.

View attachment 2618183


This is what Best Buy says about them activating the device for you to get the $200 discount.

View attachment 2618185
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So basically it just means locked vs unlocked? $100 seems like a big disparity so I assumed it meant it requires the plan to be a new signup (to make the discount worth it for the the carrier/Best Buy).
 
Channan said:
It was the same with the iPhone mini. Some people get so much joy when their phone of choice is the most successful. They need the majority to agree with their choices and they thrive on that validation.
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And in turn, they feel validation when the product they don't like does poorly. Also some people seem to just love it when Apple fumbles. It's all very strange to me.
 
ab2c4 said:
You must have really big hands because the Air is kinda on the verge of being too big for my hands as it is.
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I don’t think they’re abnormally big, I feel like they are average adult hands, maybe a bit above average since I’m 6’4”
 
Spinarelo said:
I don’t think they’re abnormally big, I feel like they are average adult hands, maybe a bit above average since I’m 6’4”
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Uh you are literally 7 inches taller than the average male in height! You are in the top 1% in height in the world. Your hands have got to be way way way bigger than average.
 
I guess BestBuy doesn’t sell T-Mobile linked iphones. Is there perhaps another vendor that is selling a T-Mobile iphone Air for $200 off?

I like that the Air has more RAM than the 17, even if the camera is inferior. I don’t really care about the thinness, but I might if I actually tried it.
 
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I wonder if Apple will really commit to the release of the iPhone Air 2? I know it’s already in pre-production, but given the poor sales and unprecedented discounts for the first generation, will it be worth it? Could an extra camera help enough to possibly double the current meager single digit percentage number? I haven’t heard any rumor about a second speaker which would also be beneficial.
 
I am tempted just to have something that feels somewhat new. But I am not sure that I would like the drawbacks.
 
Spock said:
I am tempted just to have something that feels somewhat new. But I am not sure that I would like the drawbacks.
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That’s how I feel. It seems cool but long term I see the speaker situation bothering me. I really hope they do a second gen.
 
Sales have got to be really bad for the iPhone Air because Best Buy never, ever sells current generation unlocked iPhone's. They always sell new iPhone's with a carrier service. I purchased a brand new unlocked iPhone 13 from Best Buy when the iPhone 14 was released and those required a carrier attached.
 
If the price is permanently fixed at $799 and it comes with an extra camera, it could be a good deal. While the Air is a good iPhone, I would prefer to buy the base 17 at $799 and get the ultra wide lens.
 
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Most of the European carriers lowered the price by 200 euros last week, and stateside Spectrum Mobile was offering the Air for $400 off with any trade-in (valued at $0 or higher) through 3/28/26 (went back to full price with only $100 trade-in discount as of yesterday).

I suspect we're going to see more sales / discounts on this model as we get close to the next update. I tried so hard to talk myself into the Spectrum deal but couldn't get over the missing optical zoom (battery & mono speaker I could deal with, but can't get comfortable with single lens no zoom).
 
Interesting that Best Buy is offering it unlocked. I don’t believe they’ve sold unlocked current-gen iPhones for several years.
 
I would buy an air right now but it does not have video out over HDMI which is a deal breaker for me, it's not a feature I use very often but it's so incredibly convenient when I want to use it.
 
sw1tcher said:
I'd take a regular iPhone 17 for $200 off. I don't want a compromised iPhone Air.
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Compromised for your use case, not mine.
Scotty_Trees said:
you couldn't pay me to use an Air phone. What a waste. What a letdown. What an epic fail by Apple. Seriously what were they thinking? 🤔🤔
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In your opinion. Best phone I have ever had.

Apple is wary of this thing. They don’t want to compromise Pro sales which based a data recently referred to here and other places suggest that is what has happened even with the small volume.

I am not an Apple employee, but I find it interesting that aside from the launch fanfare they have done basically zero marketing of the device.
 
I would've bought one if it had stereo speakers and a dual camera system. Just a gigantic misfire to me. Plus, like others have said, there's been practically no marketing, so it's almost like Apple knew it wasn't going to take off before they even released it. It's baffling.
 
This isn't a genuine sale. It is a bait and switch to get people to sign up for one of the two carriers. And it is the carrier that will be making the money off the customer.
 
I’m really confused by this. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max on AT&T. I traded in my previous iPhone 12 and financed the 14 on a 36-month payment plan for a few dollars a month. When it was paid off, I went to the AT&T site to see how to unlock it. It said if if was paid off, and you are still a customer in good standing, then it would be automatically unlocked.

So here we are now, you can pay $799 to get this Air on AT&T. Well, once you activate it on AT&T and pay the $799, isn’t it technically “paid off” and therefore it should be unlocked after that? Thus saving the extra $100 you’d pay to get an ‘unlocked’ one via this sale? 🤷‍♂️

I feel like I must be missing something…

(And the sale will probably disappear in another hour and 50 minutes from now.)

Edit: Too late, sale is over.
 
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