New Prices/Changes to Tracfone Smartphone Cards

Tracfone Updates Smartphone Only Cards with New Amounts/Prices

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See the Changes to Tracfone's Smartphone Airtime Cards

At the end of 2015, Tracfone added new airtime cards that are for smartphones only. These cards gave certain amounts of talk time, texts and data. They are significantly different from the regular Tracfone airtime cards which come in amounts ranging from 60 to 450 minutes.

In general, the smartphone only cards were a better deal, as they gave a lot more texts compared to the regular cards, which is what most smartphone users run out of first.

We compared the http://androidtabletgadgets.blogspot.com /2015/12/new-smartphone-airtime-cards-from.html">Smartphone Only cards to Regular Airtime cards in this post from December 2015 (which is now outdated) but Tracfone has now changed the smartphone only cards with new prices and amounts of airtime you get. They also changed how many service days you get.

Below we will go through and compare the old smartphone-only cards with the new smartphone-only cards and see what the changes mean. We will also include the regular cards for comparison.

Tracfone has not made any changes to their regular airtime cards, and we expect they will continue to offer them at the same prices and amounts.

Before we get to that, we do have some information that will make many Tracfone customers happy:

Tracfone Reduces Price for Text and Data only Cards

Along with making changes to the smartphone only cards, Tracfone also made some changes to their Text-only card and Data-only card (these cards give only additional texts or data, and no extra service days). But the only change they made was to reduce the price, which is great! These prices are only available on the Tracfone website, but we expect retailers to eventually change their prices to match.

You can now get:
1000 texts for $5 (previously was $10 for 1000 texts)
1000 MB data for $10 (previously was $10 for 300 MB)

This is a huge reduction in price, and makes buying extra data or texts much more affordable.

Remember, these cards can only be used if you have a smartphone with Tracfone (which includes BYIO devices).

Comparison of New Smartphone Only Cards vs Old Smartphone Cards (plus Regular Cards)

Now let's get into the changes Tracfone has made to their smartphone cards. These changes are a little difficult to compare, because they changed the prices on the cards, the amounts of talk, text and data you get, and also the number of service days.

Below you can see our chart that has the card, the amount of airtime, the price and the price per unit of talk/text/data. (Note - After some help from our readers, we've updated the tables to more accurately display the information, thanks for your feedback!)

(Click to View Larger) Comparison of Regular Airtime Cards vs Old Smartphone Cards vs New Smartphone Cards

(View this table in Google Docs)

We've subtracted the cost of service days from the original cost to be able to just look at the airtime casts. We've used $50 for 1 year service as the base price for airtime(because you can buy that as an add-on from the Tracfone website), which comes to $4.167 per 30 days.

There are a number of conclusions you can make from looking at the table, but the main take away for us is that the new smartphone only airtime cards are generally a better deal and especially a better deal when it comes to data compared to the old smartphone cards.

Take a look at the cost per data (MB) for both the new and old smartphone only cards. The new 500 minute and 750 minute cards are a much better deal when it comes to buying data, and pretty close to the same for talk and text costs.

Here is another table that shows how many talk/text/data minutes you get per dollar:

Tracfone Airtime Comparison - Airtime per Dollar

This table shows how many talk, text or data minutes you get per dollar. For example, with the regular 1 Year/400 Minute card, you will get 72 talk minutes per dollar, 72 texts per dollar, and 72 MB data per dollar.

Notice the smartphone only cards, for these you get very different amounts of airtime per dollar, depending on the card.

Let's see which cards give the most airtime per dollar (we won't include the old smartphone cards, because you can't buy them anymore):

Best deal on Talk - 500 Minute Smartphone card - 90 talk minutes per dollar
Best deal on Text - 500 Minute Smartphone card - 180 texts per dollar
Best deal on Data - 750 Minute Smartphone card - 112.5 MB data per dollar

So, the 500 and 750 minute smartphone only cards offer the best value per dollar you spend.

We've got one more table that we think will be helpful for those trying to decide which airtime card best suits their needs. In this table, we've multiplied each airtime card so that they all have 1 year of service, and then listed how much it would cost, and how much talk/text/data you would get.

Let's take a look:

Best Deal on Tracfone Airtime

Looking at the table, we can see that, somewhat surprisingly, the best deal if you just need more service days is the regular 60 minute airtime card.

The 120 minute card and 1500 minute smartphone card are almost the same.

Check out the 500 minute smartphone card, it gives you twice the talk and data, four times the texts, for just $25 more than the 1500 minute smartphone card.

The key takeaway from this table is that, depending what you tend to use most, different cards are a much better deal. We get a lot of comments from people who just need service days, and looking at the table we can see either the 60 minute card or the 1 year/400 minute card are both pretty cheap. But the best deal for just buying extra service days would be to get the 200 minute smartphone card, and then add on the 1 year of service for $50 (only on the Tracfone website) for a total of $65 (before taxes).

Form the changes to these new smartphone only cards we can see that you generally get more data for your money, but less service days. Keep this in mind when adding the new smartphone cards, you only get 60 days (or 30) instead of 90, but that doesn't mean they are not a good deal.

It appears then that Tracfone is just adjusting the smartphone cards to make them a little more balanced, and give users more data to use with each purchase, which may have been based on feedback they received.

The changes made to smartphone airtime cards is somewhat subtle, so it may be helpful for each user to take a look at the numbers and determine which airtime card best suits their needs.

Remember, the regular airtime cards have not changed, and are not changing (as far as we know).

Leave a comment below with your thoughts or questions about the changes to Tracfone smartphone airtime cards. We are interested to know what our readers think. We want to thank those that helped contribute to this post and keep our math correct.

We've been sharing a lot of news on new Tracfone devices, including new http://androidtabletgadgets.blogspot.com /2016/04/new-lg-samsung-smartphones-coming-to.html">Samsung and LG Tracfone Smartphones, http://androidtabletgadgets.blogspot.com /2016/07/new-zte-and-nexus-smartphones-coming-to.html">New ZTE and Alcatel Smartphones, and http://androidtabletgadgets.blogspot.com /2016/05/iphone-6s-plus-and-other-apple.html">news about iPhone devices coming to Tracfone. Follow the links to learn more, and look for reviews of these new phones soon!

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View and download the tables we created for yourself on google drive.

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