Best Buy Launches ‘Free Phone Fridays’ for October

Best Buy on Tuesday announced a new promotion to sell high-profile smart phones from each U.S. carrier for free each Friday in October. All phones will be sold with 2-year contracts, tied to their respective carriers. Each week, the company will announce what four phones it is selling on the day before at 2 p.m. Eastern.

The first day for the event is this Friday, October 1. The first free phones on sale are the Samsung Fascinate from Verizon Wireless, the BlackBerry Curve from Sprint, the HTC Aria from AT&T, and the Samsung Gravity 3 from T-Mobile. The phones can be purchased any time on Friday in Best Buy stores or online.

The Fascinate, which retails for $199.99 on Verizon Wireless’s web site, is the best deal here. We gave the Fascinate 3 stars, and especially liked its bright AMOLED display, excellent photos with the 5-megapixel camera, and mobile hotspot feature. The phone’s two biggest negatives are not being able to change the default search engine from Bing and mediocre call quality.