All of the carrier programs principally work the same, with a few nuanced differences. Sprint's One Up lets customers pick up a phone with no money down and pay for the device in 24 monthly installments. A phone that costs $649.99, for instance, will cost $27 a month (with the difference tacked on to the 24th payment). If a customer leaves the service early, that person is on the hook for the balance of the device cost, due the following month.
After a year, a customer can upgrade to a new phone by trading in the device. A customer signs up for One Up with an Unlimited, My Way or All-In plan. One Up provides a $15 discount, which allows for an unlimited talk, text, and data plan that costs as little as $65 a month. T-Mobile's comparable unlimited plan costs $70 a month.
One Up is more like Jump in that it offers customers a break on the plan in exchange for the monthly-installment model. T-Mobile's Jump was seen as a better deal than AT&T and Verizon because the carrier previously knocked the price down on all of its plans when it moved to a no-contract model. AT&T and Verizon's early upgrade plans were criticized because they didn't offer any discount on the service plans despite requiring customers to pay the full price of their devices.
