Which part of 'on-contract' you didn't understand? The full phone price is in the price of contract with interest. Of course you can buy sub-$50 phones on cont

Which part of 'on-contract' you didn't understand? The full phone price is in the price of contract with interest. Of course you can buy sub-$50 phones on contract too, in which case the monthly payment would be much lower than AT&T's $99 iPhone plan, of which about half goes towards the phone payment.