The contract is still the cheaper way to go. The person on the two year contract is paying $20 more (for 24 months) than the non-contract person. 20x24=480. The two year contract person is paying $299 for his/her phone. 480+299=779. Meanwhile the person who is paying the entire cost of the phone at one time ($864), or in installments 36x24=864. The two year contract person ends up paying $85 less. If $85 isn't a big deal to you, or your planning to jump to another carrier in the next 24 months (you may be going with a phone that will not work on their network) than that's up to you.
One of use doesnt quite understand something....and it may be me! Anyways, with me being off contract I pay 80 dollars for 10gb of shared data. With my wife, daughter and I, all of us having samsung galaxies and being off contract, I pay 15 dollars per device to access the shared data, along with unlimited text and voice. Three devices is 45 dollars plus the 80 for the gbs. Total 125 dollars plus taxes.
If I finance the N7 from verizon, they add 35 per month to my bill to pay for the N7. They also increase my line access for my line from 15 to 40 dollars, because I am no longer off contract. So I dont get the big discount on the line access fee. As a result, my monthly bill goes up by quite a bit more than just the 35 dollars for the phone payment. It goes up to like 185 plus taxes.
The other thing is, everytime I have made an adjustment to my account, my billing has been screwed up a minimum of 4 months why they sort it out and I have to call them every month.
I would rather just pay for the phone one time on my credit card and have my bill remain stable where it is at.