Ebay has a 15% off sale with code PRIMOSALE , July 11, until 11 PM Pacific,
Minimum $25 purchase, maximum $100 discount. This time, phone sales are excluded, as are other 'tech' items.
"This Coupon is a 15% discount off a minimum purchase of $25 valid from 5:00 AM PT on July 11, 2018 until 11:00 PM PT on July 11, 2018. The Coupon discount is capped at a maximum value of $100. Discount applies to the purchase price (excluding shipping, handling, and taxes) of eligible items on eBay.com, cafr.ebay.ca and ebay.ca. Eligible items exclude warranties and protection plans, as well as items from the Computers & Electronics, Cameras & Photo, Cell Phones & Accessories, Computers/Tablets & Networking, Consumer Electronics, Video Games & Consoles, Coins & Paper Money, Gift Cards & Coupons, and Real Estate categories.
Coupon must be used within a single transaction (and can include multiple eligible items),"
ATT iphone SE is $49.99 in stores (source phonearena). Need to buy $30 airtime. You should be able to use these on mvnos like freedompop, truphone, freeupmobile etc.
@KentE, I'm not familiar with the Amazon line of tablets... so if I am reading your post correctly, even though it's Amazon-based, the Fire tablet has full access to the Google Play Store and all of the Android apps, yes?
It is easy to 'jailbreak' the Amazon Fire tablets. There are easy to follow tutorials online, and it took me about 15 minutes per tablet to get Google Play Store running and another 10 minutes to clean up the home screens to make the Amazon environment less noticeable (and to disable Alexa.). (A good part of the jailbreaking time is waiting for the tablet to reboot after each step.)
The real deal with the Fire tablets is that they're heavily subsidized by Amazon, even at normal retail price. They're not powerhouses, but they're more bang for the buck than you can probably find otherwise. Last year, I bought the 7"/8gb/$30 ones more for my godchildren. (Teens, who have enjoyed them-- I put in 16gb uSD cards for storage.) I bought the 8"/16gb models for the shop for apps we need to run there. (also on sale now for $50.)
I have a fire 7 and it is garbage. I hate it. I am not patient with lag and random temporary freezes so it bothers me a lot. I don't think it is worth the money. I think the fire 8 is better since it has a tad more RAM but I haven't tried it out myself.
Does google play services make a difference? I think I had 3 apps on it that I installed myself the last time I used it. I don't usually use budget phones though so maybe I am used to much better.
My deal breaker for amazon tablets was no gps capability.
If that is not a concern, great!
BTW Thanks Kent E , the used tablet I found on amazon, and installed the Here we go app on still works great! It has spots for 2 gsm sims as well.