Sprint's 'all-in' plan gives you a phone and service for $80 (update)
Sprint has been experimenting with including phone leases in your plan for a while, and it's clearly enraptured with the idea -- enough so that it's making the lease a part of its everyday service. The carrier's new All-In plan gives you a phone and the usual unlimited data, messaging and voice for $80 per month. In theory, you never have to worry about installment plans or up-front device costs again -- you just choose a recent phone (currently the One M9, iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6) and trade it in every couple of years. It's not as sweet as some of Sprint's earlier offerings, but it's still cheaper than bigger rivals if you're looking for both a lot of data and regular hardware upgrades.
As you might suspect, it's not quite as easy a choice as it looks. You can pay a similar amount or less if you don't need that much data, and there's a $36 activation fee before you jump in. Also, the unlimited internet access isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sprint limits streaming video to 600Kbps, so this isn't your top pick if you want to watch Netflix when you're away from WiFi. Nonetheless, All-In will likely be on your short list if the math behind device upgrade plans and subsidies gives you a headache.
Update: This evening Sprint reversed its course, cutting out the 600Kbps video streaming limit, but it said it may slow streams down if the network is overloaded.
