If you want to stop paying, you can terminate your lease and return the device, but Klarna will charge you “substantial fees,” presumably the purchase fee.
It’s not the purchase fee, it is the remainder of the lease payments. (But you can pay the purchase fee and keep the device at any time instead.)
You must activate with one of the supported carriers, but after that you are limited only by that carrier’s terms. The carrier never has the right to lock your phone to them. So, practically speaking, you can switch after one month. I suppose you could try to get more clever than that, but… (ACMI, iUP, and ACMP all work(d) the same way.).
By everyone, I meant the media. 
And the code did seem quite related, with 9to5Mac saying:
The code describes a system called App Managed Features, which allows an authorized financing or provider app to enroll an iPhone and perform ongoing status checks.
Does that include AppleCare?
Right! Fixed.
Ah, that makes more sense. I think the average person doesn’t follow Apple closely enough to catch such minutiae, but as a journalist, it does make things more confusing for you to cover.
I’m not sure as I haven’t seen actual pricing for my specific phone, but I can add a device to AppleCare One for $5.99 which is much cheaper than the forced include under the old upgrade program.
(Or I could remove one of my three covered devices and put the new phone there instead, so there’d be no net increase in cost. I mainly have AppleCare One to cover my Vision Pro, which is fragile and very expensive to fix. It’s much cheaper under One and I get two other laptops covered as well.)
I’m not sure what regular AppleCare+ would be on a phone, but I still think the overall costs are cheaper, mainly because you aren’t paying for the full cost of the phone.
As others have mentioned above, I’m confused about the phone carrier lock in with this program. I’ve read you must choose one of the ‘big 3’ carriers when buying a phone under Apple Upgrade, but then I’ve read the phones are unlocked so you can cancel your ‘big 3’, expensive plan as soon as you get the phone and move it to another carrier. So, does anyone know if your are locked in to the required carrier for a required time period, or can you just cancel it?
(Some discussion about this here:
and here:
but neither of those clarify for me what time period you’re required to have the ‘big 3’ contract.)
That would appear to depend on the specific contract you have with one of those 3 carriers. The phone is unlocked and Apple will not prevent you from dropping that carrier the moment you get the new iPhone. I don’t know if one of those 3 carriers has an offer where you are free to end it after one month without penalty.
Unless you’re already in a contract with one of the big three, I can’t see how buying a new phone (from Apple) would obligate you in any way with the carrier. Just sign up with a month-to-month plan – no contract – and switch as soon as you want or need.
Apple does note it has to be a post-paid plan, prepay does not qualify.