What a free iPhone will cost you

Finding the best phone deals

Plus: New Apple gear, free file compressor, and how to remember where you put stuff

Jared Newman   |   September 15, 2026

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a longtime tech journalist, and this is Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up to get it every Tuesday.

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Apple announced new iPhones this week, and if you’re in the United States, the cheapest way to get them is through one of the big three wireless carriers.

But while they love to yell about getting a new iPhone “on us,” they tend to bury important details in the fine print. To unlock their best deals, you’ll likely need one of their most expensive wireless plans, plus a phone to trade in that’s no more than a few years old.

To figure out what a free iPhone will actually cost you, check out my newly-updated Phone Deal Finder. Enter the name of the phone you have now, and you’ll see a list of wireless plans and the trade-in credit you’ll get with each one.

Android user? The Phone Deal Finder works for you, too. Just switch to the “Samsung” or “Google Pixel” tabs to see trade-in values toward their latest flagships.

A few other notes:

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News in brief

New Apple gear

The past week’s biggest tech news came from Apple, which announced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, the foldable iPhone Duo, the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, and AirPods 5.

As a foldable phone fan, I’m most intrigued by the Duo. While it’s not wildly different from Android-based foldables (particularly Samsung’s passport-shaped Fold8), Apple has tried to shave away some of those phones’ compromises. The crease is barely visible, it works with MagSafe accessories, and it’s waterproof. You can also use it with an Apple Pencil (which is pretty much the only reason I still have an iPad Mini) and I’ll wager that app makers will do a better job supporting the new format than they do on the Android side.

Still, every foldable phone has trade-offs, including the iPhone Duo: It’s thicker and heavier than every competing Android foldable, and the camera system is worse than Apple’s Pro-level iPhones. Also, it costs $1,999. If you’re still considering it, I wrote a piece for FastCo about what to expect from the Duo, based on my years of using other foldables.

Other Apple notes:

  • The iPhone 18 Pro has the same design as last year’s models, but a smaller front camera cutout, bigger battery, and variable aperture camera lens, with new manual controls built into the Camera app. It’s also $100 more than the 17 Pro. Here’s a useful comparison.
  • As rumored, Apple did not announce a new regular iPhone 18, and probably won’t until the spring.
  • The new Apple Watches can persistently capture audio to recap earlier conversations, summarize what someone just said to you, and alert you to important sounds. Apple says it’s not a privacy nightmare because the watches won’t store any audio recordings or sensitive data, among other reasons. It doesn’t address the uncharted social territory we’ll be heading into when every offline conversation can become part of a permanent record.
  • The fifth-gen AirPods—not the Pros—have better sound and noise-cancellation. The rumored AirPods Pro with cameras, which seem like an even bigger potential privacy nightmare, have thankfully not emerged yet.
  • HomePods, Apple TV, and other smart home stuff could still happen later this year.
  • iOS 27, MacOS 27, and their offshoots are available now. More on these once I’ve had more time with them.

Other news and reads unrelated to Apple:

Tip of the week

Remember where you put stuff (on Android): Got an Android phone? Now you can use Google’s Find Hub app to remember where you’ve stored important documents and belongings, with no pricey item trackers required.

Just look for the new “Remembered” tab, where you’ll be prompted to add items with Google’s Gemini assistant. (You can use prompts like “Remember that my headphones are in the living room side table drawer.”) After the initial setup, you can also just hit the + button to log item locations.

Apple’s Find My app doesn’t currently offer anything similar, but it should!

Try these apps

Remember to do stuff (on iPhone): Unforgetful is an iPhone app whose sole job is to keep pestering you about incomplete tasks that you’ve set in Apple’s Reminders app. The idea is that if you create reminders with Siri (“Hey Siri, book the concert tickets”), you don’t have to bother setting a time or date, as the app will periodically remind you on its own. The app requires a $20 per year subscription, but you can try it free for a month. Maybe it’s worthwhile if you’re constantly putting things off until you forget about them. (My wife will probably make me subscribe if she reads this.)

Free file compressors: For my pal JR Raphael’s Cool Tools newsletter, I wrote about Vidshift and Nanofile, two free websites for making files smaller. The former is for video, and the latter is for everything else, including pictures, PDFs, and audio recordings. Check out the full writeup for more details.

Spend wisely

This section of the newsletter may include affiliate links, which earn me a commission if you wind up purchasing something.

Again, it’s a bit slow on the deal front this morning, but here’s what I’ve got:

Thanks for reading!

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That’s all for now. Catch you next week.
– Jared

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