Amazon will gladly sell you awesome phones for a penny. But what if you need that penny? Here's the best free phones on every carrier.
AT&T
Palm Pre Plus (Refurb)
Palm's webOS—and upcoming webOS 2.0—are still incredibly elegant and easy-to-use, with a decent-sized selection of apps. Better still if HP manages to really revive the brand, this a fantastic phone to get for free, even as a refurb.
Sprint
Samsung Seek
Sprint really gives cheapskates the least to live for—their free phones are a grab bag of disappointing dumbphones. The least terrible is the Samsung Seek, a touchscreen thing with a QWERTY keyboard and built-in apps for Facebook and Twitter.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile Comet
A tiny, free Android phone running a totally stock build of Android 2.2, with built-in Wi-Fi hotspot powers. And when we say tiny, we mean 2.8 inches of puny. But it is the complete Android experience for zero dollars, which is a deal.
Verizon
Palm Pixi Plus
Not as powerful as the Pre Plus AT&T's giving away, but it's a remarkably designed little phone with all of the goodness of WebOS. If only it was free from the beginning.
Obviously, all of these phones come with a two-year contract attached to the "free" bit, but a penny saved is a penny earned, for cake or for strippers.
DISCUSSION
i've gotta say, i think it's time you guys start covering a little more canadian stuff.
of course i could be wrong, but i can't imagine it would be that much more work to include a few canadian networks in a comparison like this? it would probably attract a few more readers. and it would definitely make the ones that reside north of the border a lot happier.