So this is for an iPhone 15 pro max 1tb.

Cash price: $1600 Trade in: $-1000 Upfront payment: $-400 Price left to pay over 24 should be: $200 ($8.33 per month)

Why is this saying $19.79 per month? That would be only valuing my trade in at $725, not $1000.

What am I missing here?

Rather than trying one-by-one in the estimator.... I've been finding interesting results and differences between phones that cost $100 used.

Edit: here is the answer

Hey, everyone!

So, my iPhone 14 Pro Max screen just completely died on me out of nowhere (Apple couldn’t figure out why). I was originally thinking of grabbing the 16e and then trading it in for the iPhone 17 lineup, but the Apple Store employee convinced me to pay $400 to replace the screen. The reason: he said I could probably trade it in for $500+ later, and that T-Mobile often gives better trade-in values than Apple.

Now, here’s my question:
I’ve never traded a phone in through my carrier before because I always thought it needed to be tied to a new plan (and I’m grandfathered into my current one). Is that not the case anymore? Does T-Mobile really offer better trade-in deals just because?

I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this, but when I was in the store the other day the gentleman had a chart that showed the value of the phones when tmobile purchases them back from the customer. Does anyone have that? And if so can I see it? Thanks in advance.

Edit: spelling error 'thus' corrected to 'this'

I wanted to determine whether it was better to stay on Magenta Max and buy the phone outright through Apple or move to Go5G Plus to get the better trade values so I did some basic calculations.

Currently, we pay $112/mo for two lines on Magenta Max with an Insider discount. Both phones are paid off, so this is only the cost of the plan. Only one person needs a new phone, so let's assume we are talking about only a single line here. Assuming we move to Go5G Plus, that will cost an extra $10 per month, or $240 over the period of 24 months. With an iPhone 13 trade-in, an iPhone 16 Pro 256GB will cost $11.50-$12 per month. But there's also a $35 connection fee and sales tax.

TOTAL FOR T-MOBILE OPTION: $645 over the period of two years (24mo). This includes tax, connection fee, monthly phone payment, and the increased cost of moving to Go5G Plus.

If you trade through the Apple Store, they give $250 for an iPhone 13. The total cost with tax for the 16 Pro is $1191.

TOTAL FOR APPLE STORE TRADE OPTION: $941. Just the cost of the new phone, tax, minus the trade value.

So as you can see, it saves you about $300 by going through T-Mobile, but let's say you keep the iPhone 16 Pro a 3rd year, then you save only about $200. Now what if you buy the iPhone directly from Apple and rather than doing the trade, you sell it on Facebook or Swappa? I see the iPhone 13 listed for about $350 on Swappa.