For those looking for a good deal on an iPhone, Sprint announced its flash sale. Until August 9, the carrier is offering the iPhone 8 for $8 per month to new and existing customers.
Of course, with any carrier deal, there are a few caveats. For starters, you have to sign up for the new line of service with the Sprint Flex lease plan. Introduced in 2017, the leasing program allows customers to lease a device for 18 months — after 12 monthly payments, you can swap it out for a new phone. If you want to own the device by the time the lease ends, you can either continue making monthly payments for an additional six months or pay off the remaining balance in one payment.
With the 64GB model of the iPhone 8, you’ll receive $21.17 per month in bill credit for the first two months and the remaining months will cost you $8 per month. In comparison, the iPhone 8 from Sprint would normally cost you $29.17 per month — making this an affordable deal.
But it’s important to note that if you plan on keeping the device at the end of the lease, you will end up paying a remaining balance of more than $500. So, you might be better off upgrading to a new device rather than shelling out a large sum of money toward the end.
In addition to the flash sale, Sprint also included its new revamped unlimited plans announced last month. While the carrier originally only offered the Unlimited Freedom Plan, it’s now offering the Unlimited Basic and the Unlimited Plus plan.
The Unlimited Basic Plan is geared for those who aren’t looking for a plan that’s too feature heavy. It costs $60 per line with a second line for $40 and every line after that will come out to $20 (with AutoPay). You will receive unlimited talk, text, and data in the United States along with unlimited talk and text in Mexico and Canada — among a few other perks, including a Hulu subscription. One downside is that your LTE hotspot data is reduced from 10GB to 500MB and video streams up to only 480p.
Meanwhile, the Unlimited Plus plan is more of an upgrade — offering a few more featured. In addition to unlimited talk, text, and data in the United States, you have 15GB of mobile hotspot data and streaming in full HD — up to 1080p. As for pricing (after AutoPay), it will come out to $70 for the first line and $50 for the second — each line after that will come out to $30 each.
As for Sprint’s flash sale, the promotion is currently going on. Customers can only sign up for it through Sprint’s site or by calling the carrier’s toll-free number.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.