General

I signed up for the bonus earlier today, but it'll really depend on what the trade-in values are. My S21 is still very capable for my needs. Certainly interested in what they plan to introduce this year.

On a S22 Ultra, no need to upgrade at this time for me, but excited to see what they roll out.

i just paid off my S21 last year, i'm not looking to upgrade any time soon

Typical crap show of a crappy ecomm experience trying to buy the phones today but... Ordered my wife and I s24 ultras. Was amazed they gave me $600 for my old Note 20 Ultra!

Pulling the trigger on the S24. With bill credits and a 36/mo payment plan, I'm only paying the tax. My wife just scored an iPhone 15 for free without any trade in, so we're locked into Verizon for the next 3 years anyway. If you're on Verizon and have been for a while, check out your offers (https://myvpostpay.verizon.com/ui/hub/ao/myoffers#...) I recently got $60/mo off my bill (4-lines) by just clicking a couple of buttons. Combined with the discounts I get on subscriptions, I'm paying like $26/line.

Ultra is the only one with the Pen, correct? I am an Apple person but my husband is in dire need of a new phone. I think he's still using one of the last Galaxy Note's and it barely charges. He just don't wanna give up the pen.

Yeah, the Ultra has the pen

I'll have to see if we can get some sort of deal. I won't have a trade in and we don't wanna change our plan at T-Mobile because it's a stupid good grandfathered in deal. So I might just have to pay full price.

Canceled my order through Verizon and reordered through Samsung to get a better deal. Used my AAA discount, a referral code (5% off), and snagged the free Galaxy Buds FE to get a better deal. If you have access to a .edu email address, you can get EPP pricing, which is supposed to be much better.

@SwiftJAB I get employee pricing through Microsoft. I've done some comparison with Military/AAA/edu ... it's all pretty damn close.

The worst part is, their eccom platform, is a GIANT turd.

Legit, use different browsers on different machines (desktop vs mobile) and you'll get different prices.

I've come to learn to compare all before purchasing, and refreshing at least 3x at check out. It's absolutely maddening.

I watched my buddy go through it with the S24, and he can't get back to the original discounts he had ... now it's charging $100 more.

I'm wanting to get an Ultra. Best deal I've found so far is my T-Mobile with an S9 trade in.

What's currently the best deal available assuming I have a .edu email?

The best deals are going to be through carriers that are locking you into 36-month payment plans/discounts. Samsung's trade-in values aren't that great for an unlocked phone. I don't know what the exact edu discount is, but it's 30% or less (most likely less)

SwiftJAB wrote:

Negative, deals directly through Samsung are far better - at least on launch. Post launch, the field levels out.

I got $600 trade-in for my four year old Note 20 Ultra, double the storage for free, free buds2pro, and an additional $100 off. None of the carriers can compete with that.

Oh, and Samsung direct, you can get discounts via edu/affilates/AAA/etc. It shaved off another $200 for me.

Totally go through Samsung website for the freebies, but the trade-in deals are far better with carriers. With Verizon, you would have got at least $800 for the Note 20 Ultra, $1000 if you were on one of their newer plans. Heck, I'm trading in a Note 8 with a cracked screen and getting $800. Yes, it's bill credits, but I have other lines that are already on a 36-mo bill credit cycle so I don't mind it.

Yeah I refuse to get sucked into that 3 year crap. It was such a dick move that they went from 24 to 36. I learned my lesson on that and won't ever do it again.

Still, that's interesting to hear they were giving that much on the N20U, damn!

Well T-Mobile is giving $1,000 off for trade in on an S9. Ya it locks me for 2 years but I have an insane deal with them that I'm not going anywhere else.

I already have a watch 6 and buds2 pro so I'm going to try to see what Samsung can do but that tmo trade in looks to be the best so far.

longhornsk57 wrote:

Not sure about TMo, but Verizon's trade-in deal applied to purchases made on Samsung.com. They show the estimated trade-in values right on the page where you're selecting your device.

MrBean wrote:

I know what you mean. When I finally gave up my Galaxy S3 watch with MST to go to the newer Watches, it was sucky. It was a few years ago, so there were still quite a lot places that had the old credit card swipe machines. I'd go to use my watch and they were like "Oh, sorry, we don't support Apple Pay or whatever" and I'd be like "Watch this!" and hold my watch up -- and it would work. They were always like "What the heck!??". They'd call over other employees going "this guy just paid with his watch" -- to which the nearest employee would go "Couldn't have -- we don't take Apple Pay!"

Good times.

These days, almost all of them have finally converted though, so it is rare that it would matter much any more. (I still, once on a while, get someone that hasn't seen anyone pay with their watch though -- which is always kinda fun -- but not like the old days when they just couldn't believe it worked.)

Actually after seeing the OnePlus 12 specs, I am leaning towards that as my next device it seems to be better in every way. Bigger battery, brighter display, 100W charging etc.

Also less expensive.

100w? Gdamn. I was pretty bummed with Samsung on this... My main chargers are now all 150s and yet I can't utilize for my phones.

ya I have been on OnePlus for a while and being able to charge my phone from 20% to 90% in less than 20 minutes is pretty awesome. Plus a 5,500 mAh battery. The only thing that kills the OnePlus 12 for me is the curved screen. I just wish I could get a damn phone with a flat screen, but the S24U is slower charge and $500 more.

But I hate curved screens so much that I probably will have to skip the OP12.

Well that's unexpected. My phone just shipped, supposed to be here in 2 days. Weeeee

Mine too. Case and screen protector came yesterday.

I bought an s23 off ebay like a week before this was announced because my s21 broke. Damn

That's some crap ... my wife's S24U showed up, but not mine, and yet I ordered mine first

Got my S24 a little bit ago. Transferred my S21 over and got everything setup. Took about 45 minutes to do. So far, the experience is not much different than the S21, which isn't necessarily bad. It does feel snappier thanks to a faster CPU and memory speeds. All my apps were transferred over, and I logged into the ones I use on a regular basis. It'll be interesting to see how it feels after a few weeks, but I'm optimistic that it will stay fairly snappy until apps become more bloated. I opted to put a screen protector on this one since I found myself feeling a bit annoyed that I had small scratches in the S21 after 3 years of use. I was surprised at how quick the image search worked. Time will tell how much I use that feature, but if more things act that quickly, I'll be a happy camper. The feature I'm looking forward to testing out the most is the new AI slow-mo. Taking regular 60fps video down to 1/8th speed may be super useful for a dad of a busy toddler like me.

It's still too soon to have a good verdict on this, but initial impressions leave me happy with my purchase knowing that I only paid tax and I got a pair of buds in the process. If anyone is on an S21 or newer Samsung and wonder if it's worth the upgrade, it's probably not unless you get a good deal on the phone. If you can hold off, the S25 might end up being a more significant upgrade.

SwiftJAB wrote:

This gets said about every phone launch ever, haha. "The next one will be better" ... next one rolls around, .05% change, wooo! All the Apple fanbois were already wrapped around the building.

MrBean wrote:

True, haha. The only thing that gives me hope of a more significant upgrade next year is that Samsung is losing market share to Apple and they'll need to get more creative with their upgrades to draw in those people that don't feel locked into Apple's walled garden.

Sweet, my delivery went from today by 7pm, to "the deliver date willbe provided as soon as possible".

Sons a doges.