White iPhone 4 price can be reduced to $50, but you may regret it

Those with a black iPhone 4 from Verizon or AT&T can flip it for a white model at a surprisingly low cost – but they could end up regretting it before the year is over. Those who’ve bought an iPhone 4 since it launched are not yet eligible for upgrade pricing from either carrier, which means that the official $199 and $299 price tags on the new white iPhone 4 are actually going to be $399 and $499 for existing iPhone 4 users. But thanks to the twisted world of subsidized pricing, a black iPhone 4 can be sold for about $350 to $450 on any major do-it-yourself auction site – meaning that you can flip your black iPhone 4 for a white iPhone 4 for as little as fifty bucks, plus whatever listing fees or taxes you might run into on one end of the exchange or the other. But there’s a catch, which could cost you dearly later on.

Many or even most of those who bought an iPhone 4 back when it first launched on AT&T will be eligible for upgrade pricing by the time the iPhone 5 rolls around (it’s either a twelve or eighteen month upgrade cycle, depending on a voodoo formula; you’ll have to check with AT&T or Apple to confirm your upgrade date). But buying a white iPhone 4 now will reset your upgrade-eligible date so that it’s twelve to eighteen months from now, meaning that buying a white iPhone 4 now could result in your iPhone 5 costing you an extra $200 when you go to buy it. That’s of course if you’re planning to buy the iPhone 5. Verizon customers may oddly be in a better position to flip over to a white iPhone 4; by having bought a black Verizon iPhone 4 this year, they’ve already likely blown any chance of being able to buy an iPhone 5 at advertised pricing when it arrives. And since they’re already shut out of that, there may be no harming in moving to the white iPhone 4 in the mean time. Here’s more on the white iPhone 4.