Verizon's Early Upgrage plan tweaked, but still stinks

Verizon has made a tweak to its Edge phone upgrade plan, which the carrier rolled out in the summer as a response to T-Mobile's own no-contract, early upgrade policies. The plan originally let Edge customers get a phone for no money upfront — instead, they would pay a portion of the phone's cost every month. Then, customers could upgrade to a new phone after six months, provided they also had paid off 50 percent of that phone's full retail cost. (As always, it's worth noting that this is a horrible deal for Verizon customers, who end up essentially paying a phone subsidy to Verizon twice on this plan).

As noticed by CNET and confirmed on Verizon's site, the carrier has made a tweak to Edge that does let customers using it upgrade even more frequently if they're so inclined — now, instead of waiting for six months to trade your phone in and get a new one, you can do so after just 30 days. Of course, you're still responsible for paying off half the retail cost on the phone, which means you won't save much money with this new plan. The earlier you upgrade, the less time you're paying Verizon two phone subsidies (the monthly Edge payment as well as the phone payment already built in to your contract) — but it's still not a good deal, just a less bad one.

If you're a customer using Edge and have a bad case of buyer's remorse after a month or two, you can now fix that a bit easier than before. However, Verizon subscribers who wants to upgrade their phones whenever they want are probably better off just buying phones at their full retail cost — you control exactly when you buy a new phone, and you get to keep or sell them afterwards rather than give them back in to Verizon.