Want Apple’s iPhone 5s and iPhone 5C at a Discounted Price? Virgin Mobile Leads the Way

By now, Apple’s newest iPhones 5s and 5C have been in the public eye for nearly five months, and you’ve had time to buy Christmas presents and deliberate a little about whether or not the new iPhones interest you. Let’s face it, however: your iPhone 5 may still work and have the same great quality, but it’s not one of the newest kids on the block. When you see your friends with their shiny iPhones, you want one, too. It’s alright: this same tendency lies within all of us.

Well, Virgin Mobile is here to aid and abet your indulgence: the Sprint MVNO is now offering the iPhone 5s for – you read it right! – $494.99, while the iPhone 5C can be yours for $404.99. Virgin Mobile has thus discounted Apple’s latest-generation iPhone down to approximately $200 below the unlocked price you will find in Apple’s retail store. This will prove to be exciting news for those who want to have an off-contract iPhone and do not care for burdening two-year contracts.

Update: Virgin Mobile has further discounted the price of the iPhone 5s this week, with the 16GB now being priced at $439.99, the 32GB $519.99, and the 64GB $599.99. The iPhone 5C is now priced at $359.99 for the 16GB version and $439.99 for the 32GB version.

There are some things you must know about the Virgin Mobile deal, however – one being that you cannot use the Virgin Mobile iPhone on any other network except Virgin Mobile. If you decide to deal with the carrier, then walk away six months later, you can sell your phone to a friend or trade your phone in to Virgin Mobile (or some other carrier), but you cannot activate the iPhone on any other network. If you buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple’s retail store or Amazon, for example, you can use it with either AT&T or T-Mobile and walk away from each carrier at a moment’s notice, then take your phone to the other carrier for service. The thing about the sweet unlocked iPhone deal is that it comes with an expensive price tag ($692 for 16GB, $792 for 32GB, and $892 for 64GB).

There is one more thing to point out, however: Virgin Mobile does have the new, shiny iPhone 5s in multiple memory storage versions. In other words, for the price of a 16GB iPhone 5s at a local Apple retail store ($692), you can get a 64GB iPhone 5s from Virgin Mobile – and still have $20 left over for apps and games. Pretty cool, huh?

Whatever you do, don’t wait until the deal is over. Some deals on Virgin Mobile phones will expire on February 3rd, but Virgin Mobile has not yet provided an expiration date for its current iPhone 5s and 5C promotions. If you’re planning to get either the iPhone 5s or iPhone 5C, it is better to do it sooner rather than later.