The two-year phone contract is dead. Sprint confirmed to The Verge this morning that it is no longer offering two-year contracts on phones, meaning that all four major US carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint — now only sell phones at full price and on installment plans. Though it means having one fewer option to buy a phone, the transition over to installment plans has been good news for those who want more flexibility and transparency in their phone service. Rather than having a hidden fee built into your phone contract, you can now know — and choose — exactly how much your phone payment is.
Contracts will not be missed
Sprint quietly dropped its contract option last Friday, the same day that AT&T did. It will continue selling tablets on contract plans. Android Central first reported the details via a leaked retail slide on Thursday.
T-Mobile was the first of the major carriers to stop offering two-year contracts, doing so almost three years ago at this point. It took a while before T-Mobile's competitors began to do the same, but once they did, contracts died off pretty quickly. AT&T began following T-Mobile's lead early last year by limiting where two-year contracts were sold. Verizon killed its contract plans in August, and reports that Sprint would do the same followed shortly thereafter. As of last Friday, AT&T and Sprint finally put an end to them.
