I’ve been attempting to research this but Telstra doesn’t make the topic particularly clear.
I have had an iPhone 16 Pro Max on contract with Telstra for approx 18 months to be paid off over 36 months with Upgrade & Protect. The way I understood it in the beginning was that I could wait until I was near the end of my contract and upgrade my phone for free (minus the $540 I’ve paid for Upgrade & Protect over 36 months), and once I finished paying off my contract I would have a much newer phone for the price of paying for Upgrade & Protect. My original plan was to upgrade when the iPhone 19 releases late next year (as there is about a month window from release until my plan ends), and to walk away with a new phone already paid off. From the research I’ve done however, this doesn’t sound like the case.
It sounds as though I would have to get a new 36 month contract for the new device? If that’s the case would it not just be worth waiting for my plan to end before upgrading and just selling the iPhone 16 myself? Or taking it directly to Apple and trading it in for the newer phone? It feels as though I’m paying an extra $540 over the price of my plan AND forfeiting the trade in value of the device just to get a new plan and contract to pay off from scratch. It hardly seems worth the trouble, or the cost.
Any advice would be appreciated, thank you.