In addition to the announcement of the FATTNET from Xpax prepaid plan, Celcom also introduced a new smartphone leasing plan called NewPhone. Only the second such plan offered by a local telco, NewPhone allows users to upgrade to a new smartphone every year by paying a fixed monthly fee.
The NewPhone leasing plan is similar to Maxis’ Zerolution, where it allows a postpaid subscriber to “rent” or lease a smartphone from the telco for a fixed monthly fee. Over the course of a year, the subscriber has the option to change to a brand new smartphone, or after two years, the original smartphone is theirs to keep and own.
What’s different with NewPhone is that Celcom had a primary goal in mind: to make it as simple and easy to understand as possible. As a result, NewPhone’s pricing tiers include a clearly-shown comprehensive device protection plan, and does not have any additional hidden charges during upgrading.
Currently, there are four pricing tiers for NewPhone: RM55, RM105, RM145 and RM175. Each tier is for the subscriber to lease smartphones from different price ranges. One downside that we can see so far is the fact that only five smartphones are offered in the NewPhone plan, and they’re all from Samsung: the Galaxy J5, Galaxy A8, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy Note 5, and the Galaxy S6 edge+.
All existing and new Celcom postpaid customers are eligible to subscribe to NewPhone, with the only condition being that they also subscribe to a postpaid plan. There are no restrictions on which postpaid plan they must subscribe to, which means you can even sign up for a First Blue RM45 postpaid plan and still be eligible to walk away with a NewPhone. Plus, those on legacy postpaid plans can also subscribe to NewPhone.
Subscribing to a NewPhone plan is also contract-free, meaning that you can stop the subscription at any time with no penalty charges. Subscribers will also not be charged when they change to a new smartphone on the 13th month, but those who want to change to a new smartphone after three months on NewPhone will be charged a nominal fee.
Here are the five smartphones available on NewPhone, and how much the monthly fees are, both with and without the device protection:
The Celcom NewPhone smartphone subscription plan is now available at all Celcom Blue Cube outlets nationwide.
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