You gain AppleCare+ as a benefit, bringing the price a lot closer. It&#x27;s also unlocked, which could be nice for some people.<p>Here&#x27;s the big difference, though, at least with AT&amp;T&#x27;s Next: With Next, the &quot;how often can you upgrade&quot; and &quot;how long do you have to pay&quot; are highly mismatched.<p>The most frequent upgrade plan is once very 12 months (&quot;AT&amp;T Next 12&quot;). To get this, I have to commit to paying 20 months (or ~3.33 years).<p>If I want to upgrade two years in a row, I&#x27;ve committed to paying 40 months (2 terms of the plan). That at least gets me 3 upgrades in that term. If I want to go for a 4th upgrade, we&#x27;re now at an overall committed payment term of 5 years.<p>That&#x27;s fine if you&#x27;re doing this long-term, but Apple&#x27;s appears much simpler: You pay for 2 years. In that time, you get 2 phones.<p>Verizon&#x27;s program lets you upgrade &quot;any time&quot; you want, but only once you&#x27;ve paid off the cost of the new phone. Unless you pay a chunk of change early, this means one upgrade every 2 years, just like a contract, compared to Apple&#x27;s once-a-year.<p>What I&#x27;m not sure about with Apple&#x27;s is whether you can end your 2 year plan with a second phone, and then terminate and keep the phone. This is what I&#x27;d most like to know before considering this further. The Terms and Conditions page doesn&#x27;t seem to be up yet..<p>Given that the upgrade is once every 12 months, timing also seems important. I&#x27;d imagine you&#x27;d want to activate the plan just after a new iPhone comes out, and hopefully time it so that you end the 2 years right after another new iPhone comes out, if you really want the latest-and-greatest.<p>Overall though, it <i>seems</i> to be more fair compared to AT&amp;T&#x27;s Next and Verizon&#x27;s Early Upgrade programs.