It's actually a pretty good deal. It costs a little bit more than buying the phone outright on day 1, but you get to pay over time.
If you trade in after only one year, you basically paid a dollar a day to rent the phone. But if you had bought one outright and sold it at the end of the year in order to buy the new model, you would not be a whole lot better off -- and you might have had to deal with potentially scummy eBay or Craigslist buyers.
