Cell Phones Among This Year’s Best Black Friday Deals

Cell phones have come a long way, and this year, with the changes in Android and Windows Phone, we’re starting to see more and more low-priced handsets become available. With American Thanksgiving next week, those prices are set to get even lower for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of the other holiday sales.

What you buy depends a lot on what carrier you’re planning on using, as well as if you’re looking for a for a non-contract phone cell phone or one that comes with a contract discount of some kind. One of the best places to look this year is Best Buy, which has become retailer with the greatest selection of Black Friday deals on a wide variety of products. Not only that, but the vast majority of their discounts are available online, so you don’t have to brave the crowds. The best cell phone deals in their Black Friday lineup include.

Nokia Lumia 635 (AT&T GoPhone) for $39.99: While Android and iOS dominate the market, Windows Phone’s market share is increasing. Why? It scales the best on older, less expensive hardware, which means that they have some pretty solid, fully-featured cell phones under $100. This model, the Nokia Lumia 635, has the reputation of being the best phone under $100. It retails for $99.99, but is easy to find at a street price of $79.99, which means that it’s a whopping 50% off at Best Buy next week. If you can overlook the faults, like the lack of flash, it’s an incredible deal. As for compatibility, any GoPhone-branded phone can be used with a SIM card from any carrier riding AT&T’s network. So whether you have GoPhone, Cricket, H2O, Straight Talk on AT&T’s network, post-paid AT&T, or anything else on their network, this phone will work.

HTC Desire 510 (Boost Mobile) for $29.99: While this phone is subject to mixed reviews leaning towards negative, that’s at the $99.99 retail price. At this big a discount, if you’re already a Boost user (their phones are completely locked down to their network), it’s well worth looking into.

Sony Xperia T2 Ultra 4G (Unlocked) for $199.99: Need an unlocked phablet? For $200, it doesn’t get much better than this. The 6″ 720p screen may not be the absolute sharpest you see on the cell phones mentioned here, but it’s hard to be negative on this when you get so much phone for the price, especially one so well made with such a nice camera.

LG G3 (Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint) for $1 with two year contract: Their flagship phone deal of the day. While some may question the need for super high resolution screen on a pocket size device, this is one of the best phones on the market right now, the usual hot features like tap to wake as well as it’s own unique halfway-on display that works with a special case to give you

Historically, prepaid carriers have not been a provider of great cell phone deals. With no contractual commitment, giving you a discount or subsidy on your handset becomes a dicey proposition. However, it’s notable that with Cricket, that’s starting to change: While not a Black Friday deal per se, the AT&T-owned mobile virtual network operator (or MVNO) has a number of impressive deals for free and cheap phones after $75 rebates that you become eligible for after paying for your second month of service: Cricket-locked versions of the Nokia Lumia 635 and HTC Desire 510 are available free after rebate, while the Moto G LTE, almost universally considered the best lower end smartphone per Engadget’s review aggregation, is $25 after the rebate. Cricket will unlock the cell phones for you after six months of paid service.

While many other retailers will have sales on cell phones this holiday season, those are the probably the best to show themselves so far.