Technologies

God of War: Ragnarok’s Emotional Ending Explained

Kratos and Atreus’ second adventure ends in spectacular fashion. Heavy God of War: Ragnarok spoilers inside.

It’s only November, but it’s already Christmas time for PlayStation owners. God of War: Ragnarok, the most anticipated PlayStation exclusive of the year, is finally here. The game is highly acclaimed, with a score of 94 on Metacritic, having received glowing reviews from publications such as ours.

God of War: Ragnarok is lauded for a lot, but its touching and thoughtful story perhaps most of all. «Touching» and «thoughtful» may be surprising descriptors for a game called «God of War,» but anyone who played Ragnarok’s 2018 predecessor likely would expect as much. As the title suggests, God of War: Ragnarok is about a cataclysmic war known in Norse mythology as Ragnarok.

At its core, however, it’s much more about the relationship between a father and his son. That father just happens to be an unstoppable killing machine. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Massive God of War: Ragnarok spoilers below.

The short version of God of War: Ragnarok’s ending

After spending much of God of War: Ragnarok fiercely rejecting the idea of war, Kratos is eventually pulled into participating in Ragnarok — the great war against Asgard. Before that happens, it’s revealed that Tyr, the Norse god of war who’s been staying at Kratos & Co’s headquarters, has actually been Odin all along. Odin used his godly powers to disguise himself as Tyr, and spent the whole game spying on Kratos, Atreus and Freya.

Odin makes his grand revelation by stabbing and killing Brok. That turns Sindri, normally gregarious and deferential, into an angry Dwarf, deeply resentful of Kratos, Atreus and their role in setting up Brok’s death. Sindri helps them out at Ragnarok, but only because he wants revenge on Odin. He uses a tool that gives the gang a way to penetrate through the wall that surrounds Asgard.

Inside, Kratos battles and defeats Thor. Just as Thor begins to repent for his sins and heed Kratos’ plea to be a better god, Odin appears and kills Thor. Kratos, Freya and Atreus then battle and defeat Odin. Atreus uses Giant magic to trap Odin’s spirit in a marble, then Sindri appears, snatches the marble and smashes it to bits with a hammer. Like I said, angry Dwarf.

The gang manages to escape Asgard thanks to Angrboda, a Giant who Atreus meets early in the game. After the battle, Angrboda tells Atreus she knows he’s had Giant visions, and that she needs to tell Kratos. He does so, informing his father that there are other Giants out there, and that he alone needs to find them. In the moment of Ragnarok, Kratos embraces his son and tells him he’s ready for his own adventure.

Atreus says goodbye, and Kratos sees on a shrine revealed to him by Agrboda that the Giants long ago prophesized him as the hero of Ragnarok.

Santa Monica Studio, God of War’s developer, has said Ragnarok is the end, and that God of War won’t be spun into another trilogy. But the way the game ended absolutely opens up the possibility of a follow-up that focuses on Atreus — possibly with Sindri as a villain. Dwarf magic is established as immensely powerful in God of War: Ragnarok, and Sindri’s obvious hatred of Kratos and Atreus is one of the conspicuous threads left untied by Ragnarok’s end.

That’s the short version of God of War: Ragnarok’s ending. Read on for a more comprehensive look at how God of War: Ragnarok played out.

The lead up to Ragnarok

To understand God of War: Ragnarok’s story trajectory, you need to understand a little about how its story is told. Unlike the 2018 God of War, in which Atreus is by Kratos’ side for almost all of the adventure, the two go their separate ways for a lot of Ragnarok’s story.

About halfway through the game, Atreus hatches a plan. Odin at the beginning of God of War: Ragnarok invites Atreus to Asgard. What if Atreus goes to Asgard, pretends to switch sides, buddies up with Odin and learns his Ragnarok plans?

Atreus gets into Asgard by having Odin’s ravens transport him there. After climbing the giant wall that surrounds Asgard’s city, Atreus learns that Odin is motivated by a tear into another dimension. «The rift, possibly the birthplace of reality,» he tells Atreus of the tear. «I looked inside and something was there looking back at me.»

Entering the tear, Odin says, will grant infinite knowledge. Odin knows he has to die at some point, but he needs to know what’s next before he does. The rift can grant that knowledge, but going in there without requisite protective gear means sure death: Odin tells Atreus that peeking into the tear is how he lost his eye. Odin has a fragment of a mask he reckons will protect his face enough. The mask fragment is inscribed with Giant script that Odin can’t read — which is why he needs Atreus.

Odin tasks Atreus with finding the other mask fragments. To do that, he needs to work with both Thor and Heimdall, who’s blessed with the ability to read people’s intentions. While Atreus does that, Kratos and Freya, who are now a team again after Kratos helped break Odin’s curse that trapped Freya in Midgard, are left to their own devices.

Much of the game’s plot revolves around destiny. The previous God of War ended with Kratos seeing a Giant’s prophecy that he would die at Ragnarok. Kratos scoffs at such predictions, and says that we make our own fate. Just to be sure, however, Kratos, Faye and Mimir visit the Norns, the masters of fate. The Norns agree with Kratos — that there is no such thing as fate — but the choices people make are so predictable so as to make prophesizing easy business. More importantly, they reveal that Heimdall intends to kill Atreus.

With his son’s life at risk, Kratos makes his decision. Heimdall must die — even if that kicks off war with Asgard.

The big twist

To protect his son, Kratos has to kill Heimdall. Heimdall can read people’s intentions, so attacking him is hard. Kratos asks Sindri and Brok if they could forge a new weapon to help him beat the Aesir god, and the two Dwarfs come up with the Draupnir Spear. To create it, Brok escorts Kratos to Svartalfheim, where they gather materials and get a weird Mermaid creature to craft the Spear. It’s a whole thing.

Kratos gets his chance to use the weapon when Heimdall confronts him in Vanaheim. It’s a success! Heimdall can read people’s intentions, so can catch the spear every time Kratos throws it at him. But the spear can implode and regenerate, which allows Kratos to harm and ultimately kill Heimdall. (Yes, if Heimdall could truly read intentions he would know Kratos intends to implode the spear, and so he’d avoid it rather than catch it. Don’t think too hard about it.) He tries unsuccessfully to walk away from the defeated Heimdall, but Heimdall won’t relent. Kratos has no choice but to strangle him to death.

After collecting one of the two missing mask fragments, Atreus tells Odin he wants to go home. Odin allows it. But with Heimdall dead, Atreus decides he should return to Asgard. Odin will soon figure out that Kratos killed Heimdall, and that will surely lead to war. In the brief period of time before that happens, Atreus wants to head to Asgard to help Odin complete the mask. That can both distract Odin and allow Atreus to learn more of his plans — and possibly steal the mask, too.

On his return to Asgard, Odin gets Atreus and a superdrunk Thor to travel through Niflheim. Atreus locates the final fragment. At that moment, Odin appears and asks for the mask. The next moment, Thor’s wife Sif appears and reveals that Kratos killed Heimdall. Thor goes into a rage, trying to attack Atreus. Atreus uses a gadget given to him by Sindri to escape at the very last second.

Back at Sindri’s house, Atreus, Kratos, Tyr and Freya devise a plan. If they can go to Asgard, they can lure Odin out with the mask and kill him. That way they won’t have to initiate Ragnarok, and war can be avoided. Tyr, keen to avoid war at all costs, says this is a fabulous idea. And in fact, he has just the thing: a secret path to Asgard.

Everyone is hyped except for Brok. Brok wonders why Tyr never mentioned this path to Asgard before, and why Tyr is calling Atreus «Loki.» Tyr says he’ll show them the path after he collects his «things,» but Brok points out that he has no things — what a burn — and slaps the mask out of Tyr’s hands. As everyone surrounds Brok, treating him like a crazy Dwarf, Tyr fatally stabs Brok and reveals that he’s not actually Tyr — Odin has been pretending to be Tyr the whole time.

After a standoff, Odin takes the mask and goes back to Asgard. Ragnarok it is.

Ragnarok cometh

It’s prophesized that Surtr, the fire demon of Muspelheim, kicks off Ragnarok with an attack on Asgard. Kratos and Atreus travel to Muspelheim and, after some wrangling, convince Surtr to mount his attack. After that, it’s officially on.

Kratos is named general of the army attacking Asgard: It’s comprised of Freya, her brother Freyr, the Valkeries, the dark and light elves of Alfheim, the World Serpent Jormungandr, Angrboda, the Hel-Walkers from Helheim, and Surtr. Using Gjallarhorn, a horn which Kratos took off Heimdall after killing him, Kratos is able to open a portal to Asgard in Tyr’s Temple.

Sindri has been understandably morose after the death of Brok. «You don’t know what sorry means,» Sindri snaps at Atreus when the latter tries to apologize for Brok’s death. «I gave you everything: my skills, my friendship, my home, my secrets, my treasures, and you just kept taking. And now what have I got? Not even my family.» Still, Sindri said he’d enlist the help of the Dwarfs. When he arrives in Asgard, though, he’s on his lonesome. His people have shed enough blood for others, he says. Luckily, Sindri didn’t come empty-handed, as he has a that reveals a flaw in the giant wall that surrounds Asgard. Atreus is able to exploit the flaw and enter Asgard, where Kratos almost immediately gets in a fight with Thor.

Kratos wins, but spares Thor. «No more,» Kratos says, putting his Leviathan Ax away. «For the sake of our children, we must be better.» Before Thor can say anything though, Odin appears and berates him for talking. «You don’t talk, you don’t think! I think, you kill,» Odin says. Thor drops his hammer and says he won’t be Odin’s killing machine anymore — which prompts Odin to fatally impale Thor, his son, with a spear.

That kicks off the final battle against Odin, a two-part boss fight in which Kratos, Atreus and Freya are victorious. Atreus beseeches Odin to be better — like father, like son — but Odin refuses. «I have to know what’s next. I will not stop,» Odin says. «Why’d you have to say that?» Atreus replies regretfully.

Atreus uses Giant magic to remove Odin’s spirit and forge it into a marble. Kratos, Freya and Atreus go back and forth on what to do with it. Kratos lets Freya decide, but Freya puts the decision on Atreus’ young shoulders. Before the lad can decide, however, Sindri appears out of nowhere, puts the marble on a table and smashes it with his hammer. «That’s what comes next,» he says before vanashing on the spot.

The bad guy is beaten, but unfortunately Surtr, now a giant and uncontrollable fire demon, is still wrecking Asgard. They all need a way out. Agrboda is the gang’s ticket outta there: She arrives with Garm and opens a rift into another realm. (When Kratos asks how, she simply replies: «Giant stuff.») Everyone makes it out except Freyr, who sacrificed himself holding off Surtr so the rest could make it out.

God of Peace

After the cataclysm ends, Atreus wakes up in Midgard. He walks along a spiral path, passing by all the friends he met in God of War: Ragnarok, until he gets to the top, where Angrboda is waiting. She tells him she knows he’s been seeing Giant visions, and that he needs to tell his father.

«Every part of me is telling me this is what I have to do, I just don’t know how to say it,» Atreus says.

Kratos walks in at that inopportune moment, but before Atreus can speak, Angrboda says she wants to show them both something. It’s a shrine that reveals that Faye long ago destroyed Atreus’ shrine in Jotunheim, allowing the pair to forge their own path. This is a little confusing, because Faye didn’t destroy Atreus’ shrine — it was there, clear to see for both Atreus and Kratos at the end of God of War, but that’s fine.

Atreus has a heart-to-heart with his dad. «There are other Giants out there, and I’ve got to find them,» Atreus says to Kratos, giving Sony the option to follow up with a Loki game. «I think I know where to look, but they’re my responsibility. I need to do this alone.»

Atreus says he’s frightened by the idea of a solo adventure, but Kratos says that’s why he must do it. Kratos says they only survived Ragnarok because of Atreus’ decisions, and that he’s ready to fend for himself. They embrace. It’s deeply emotional.

Atreus scampers off with Agrboda before bidding his father Adieu. Left on his own, Kratos closes the shrine, only to find a second side on the back. There the Giants show Kratos to be the hero of Ragnarok — more god of peace than god of war. Kratos is overwhelmed, even letting out a few tears and whimpers at the vision of him as a savior instead of an instrument of death and destruction, as he was in Greece.

«What did you see in there brother?» Mimir asks Kratos. «A path,» Kratos replies. «One I had never imagined.»

Epilogue

Credits roll after Atreus leaves you, but the story isn’t over quite yet. Remnants of Odin’s forces have landed aross the realms, and finishing the main quest unlocks the side quest of clearing out this riffraff. If you travel to Niflheim, where Odin’s Ravens chill, you’ll see a new area can be accessed.

If you follow the new path, it’ll take you to a secret prison. Get to the main cell at the bottom and you’ll discover none other than Tyr, the real Tyr. Tyr doesn’t say much. Mimir gives him the TL;DR of God of War: Ragnarok — that Odin is dead thanks to Kratos — and Tyr responds by saying he needs space to process this information. If you visit the other realms, you’ll sometimes bump into Tyr. I found him doing some Tai Chi stuff in Vanaheim and Helheim.

The other sidequest that opens up after the main story ends is a funeral for Brok. This is quick and easy. You go to Svartalfheim, to Durlin’s office, and then you’re directed to a beach area, where Brok gets a final send-off into Valhalla. Kratos places Brok into a little raft. Before Brok is pushed off, Sindri materializes, cries over his brother’s body and says he loves him.

Sindri holds a flaming torch for Freya, who lights an arrow and shoots it into the now floating boat, lighting it aflame. Kratos puts his hand on Sindri’s shoulder and tries to offer consoling words, but Sindri peels Kratos’ hand off and gives him a look of scorn. He says nothing, walks a few steps and then vanishes.

Earlier in the game, Brok had given Mimir a riddle. What gets bigger the more you take away? It bedevilled Mimir for a long time, but finally Mimir gets the answer. «A hole.» The screen fades to black as the credits roll again.

Technologies

The Future’s Here: Testing Out Gemini’s Live Camera Mode

Gemini Live’s new camera mode feels like the future when it works. I put it through a stress test with my offbeat collectibles.

«I just spotted your scissors on the table, right next to the green package of pistachios. Do you see them?»

Gemini Live’s chatty new camera feature was right. My scissors were exactly where it said they were, and all I did was pass my camera in front of them at some point during a 15-minute live session of me giving the AI chatbot a tour of my apartment. Google’s been rolling out the new camera mode to all Android phones using the Gemini app for free after a two-week exclusive to Pixel 9 (including the new Pixel 9A) and Galaxy S5 smartphones. So, what exactly is this camera mode and how does it work?

When you start a live session with Gemini, you now how have the option to enable a live camera view, where you can talk to the chatbot and ask it about anything the camera sees. Not only can it identify objects, but you can also ask questions about them — and it works pretty well for the most part. In addition, you can share your screen with Gemini so it can identify things you surface on your phone’s display.

When the new camera feature popped up on my phone, I didn’t hesitate to try it out. In one of my longer tests, I turned it on and started walking through my apartment, asking Gemini what it saw. It identified some fruit, ChapStick and a few other everyday items with no problem. I was wowed when it found my scissors.

That’s because I hadn’t mentioned the scissors at all. Gemini had silently identified them somewhere along the way and then recalled the location with precision. It felt so much like the future, I had to do further testing.

My experiment with Gemini Live’s camera feature was following the lead of the demo that Google did last summer when it first showed off these live video AI capabilities. Gemini reminded the person giving the demo where they’d left their glasses, and it seemed too good to be true. But as I discovered, it was very true indeed.

Gemini Live will recognize a whole lot more than household odds and ends. Google says it’ll help you navigate a crowded train station or figure out the filling of a pastry. It can give you deeper information about artwork, like where an object originated and whether it was a limited edition piece.

It’s more than just a souped-up Google Lens. You talk with it, and it talks to you. I didn’t need to speak to Gemini in any particular way — it was as casual as any conversation. Way better than talking with the old Google Assistant that the company is quickly phasing out.

Google also released a new YouTube video for the April 2025 Pixel Drop showcasing the feature, and there’s now a dedicated page on the Google Store for it.

To get started, you can go live with Gemini, enable the camera and start talking. That’s it.

Gemini Live follows on from Google’s Project Astra, first revealed last year as possibly the company’s biggest «we’re in the future» feature, an experimental next step for generative AI capabilities, beyond your simply typing or even speaking prompts into a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It comes as AI companies continue to dramatically increase the skills of AI tools, from video generation to raw processing power. Similar to Gemini Live, there’s Apple’s Visual Intelligence, which the iPhone maker released in a beta form late last year.

My big takeaway is that a feature like Gemini Live has the potential to change how we interact with the world around us, melding our digital and physical worlds together just by holding your camera in front of almost anything.

I put Gemini Live to a real test

The first time I tried it, Gemini was shockingly accurate when I placed a very specific gaming collectible of a stuffed rabbit in my camera’s view. The second time, I showed it to a friend in an art gallery. It identified the tortoise on a cross (don’t ask me) and immediately identified and translated the kanji right next to the tortoise, giving both of us chills and leaving us more than a little creeped out. In a good way, I think.

I got to thinking about how I could stress-test the feature. I tried to screen-record it in action, but it consistently fell apart at that task. And what if I went off the beaten path with it? I’m a huge fan of the horror genre — movies, TV shows, video games — and have countless collectibles, trinkets and what have you. How well would it do with more obscure stuff — like my horror-themed collectibles?

First, let me say that Gemini can be both absolutely incredible and ridiculously frustrating in the same round of questions. I had roughly 11 objects that I was asking Gemini to identify, and it would sometimes get worse the longer the live session ran, so I had to limit sessions to only one or two objects. My guess is that Gemini attempted to use contextual information from previously identified objects to guess new objects put in front of it, which sort of makes sense, but ultimately, neither I nor it benefited from this.

Sometimes, Gemini was just on point, easily landing the correct answers with no fuss or confusion, but this tended to happen with more recent or popular objects. For example, I was surprised when it immediately guessed one of my test objects was not only from Destiny 2, but was a limited edition from a seasonal event from last year.

At other times, Gemini would be way off the mark, and I would need to give it more hints to get into the ballpark of the right answer. And sometimes, it seemed as though Gemini was taking context from my previous live sessions to come up with answers, identifying multiple objects as coming from Silent Hill when they were not. I have a display case dedicated to the game series, so I could see why it would want to dip into that territory quickly.

Gemini can get full-on bugged out at times. On more than one occasion, Gemini misidentified one of the items as a made-up character from the unreleased Silent Hill: f game, clearly merging pieces of different titles into something that never was. The other consistent bug I experienced was when Gemini would produce an incorrect answer, and I would correct it and hint closer at the answer — or straight up give it the answer, only to have it repeat the incorrect answer as if it was a new guess. When that happened, I would close the session and start a new one, which wasn’t always helpful.

One trick I found was that some conversations did better than others. If I scrolled through my Gemini conversation list, tapped an old chat that had gotten a specific item correct, and then went live again from that chat, it would be able to identify the items without issue. While that’s not necessarily surprising, it was interesting to see that some conversations worked better than others, even if you used the same language.

Google didn’t respond to my requests for more information on how Gemini Live works.

I wanted Gemini to successfully answer my sometimes highly specific questions, so I provided plenty of hints to get there. The nudges were often helpful, but not always. Below are a series of objects I tried to get Gemini to identify and provide information about.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for April 26, #1407

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,407 for April 26. Hint: Fans of a certain musical group will rock out with this puzzle.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough. The letters are fairly common, and fans of a certain rock band might get a kick out of the answer. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There is one vowel in today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint No. 3: Start letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with the letter C.

Wordle hint No. 4: Rock out

Today’s Wordle answer is the name of a legendary English rock band.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a violent confrontation.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is CLASH.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, April 25, No. 1406 was KNOWN.

Recent Wordle answers

April 21, No. 1402: SPATE

April 22, No. 1403: ARTSY

April 23, No. 1404: OZONE.

April 24, No. 1405: GENIE

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

Don’t be afraid to use our tip sheet ranking all the letters in the alphabet by frequency of uses. In short, you want starter words that lean heavy on E, A and R, and don’t contain Z, J and Q.

Some solid starter words to try:

ADIEU

TRAIN

STARE

NOISE

Technologies

T-Mobile Adds New Top 5G Plans, T-Satellite and New 5-Year Price Locks

The new top unlimited plans, Experience More and Experience Beyond, shave some costs and add data and satellite options.

Just two years after expanding its lineup of cellular plans, T-Mobile this week announced two new plans that replace its Go5G Plus and Go5G Next offerings, refreshed its prepaid Metro line and wrapped them all in a promised five-year pricing guarantee.

To convert more subscribers, the carrier is also offering up to $800 to help customers pay off phone balances when switching from another carrier.

In a briefing with CNET, Jon Friar, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group, explained why the company is revamping and simplifying its array of mobile plans. «The pain point that’s out there over the last couple of years is rising costs all around consumers,» Friar said. «For us to be able to bring more value and even lower prices on [plans like] Experience More versus our former Go5G Plus is a huge win for consumers.»

The new plans went into effect April 23.

With these changes, CNET is already hard at work updating our picks for Best T-Mobile Plans, so check back soon for our recommendations.

More Experiences to define the T-Mobile experience

The top of the new T-Mobile postpaid lineup is two new plans: Experience More and Experience Beyond.

Experience More is the next generation of the Go5G Plus plan, which has unlimited 5G and 4G LTE access and unlimited Premium Data (download speeds up to 418Mbps and upload speeds up to 31Mbps). High-speed hotspot data is bumped up to 60GB from 50GB per month. The monthly price is now $5 lower per line than Go5G Plus.

The Experience More plan also gets free T-Satellite with Starlink service (the new name for T-Mobile’s satellite feature that uses Starlink’s constellation of satellites) through the end of 2025. Although T-Satellite is still officially in beta until July, customers can continue to get free access to the beta starting now. At the start of the new year, the service will cost $10 per month, a $5 drop from T-Mobile’s originally announced pricing. T-Satellite will be open to customers of other carriers for the same pricing beginning in July.

The new top-tier plan, Experience Beyond, also comes in $5 per line cheaper than its predecessor, Go5G Next. It has 250GB of high-speed hotspot data per month, up from 50GB, and more data when you’re traveling outside the US: 30GB in Canada and Mexico (versus 15GB) and 15GB in 215 countries (up from 5GB). T-Satellite service is included in the Experience Beyond plan.

However, one small change to the Experience plans affects that pricing: Taxes and fees, previously included in the Go5G Plus and Go5G Next prices, are now broken out separately. T-Mobile recently announced that one such fee, the Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery Fee, would increase up to 50 cents per month.

According to T-Mobile, the Experience Beyond rates and features will be «rolling out soon» for customers currently on the Go5G Next plan.

The Essentials plan is staying in the lineup at the same cost of $60 per month for a single line, the same 50GB of Premium Data and unlimited 5G and 4G LTE data. High-speed hotspot data is an optional $10 add-on, as is T-Satellite access, for $15 (both per month).

Also still in the mix is the Essentials Saver plan, an affordable option that has ranked high in CNET’s Best Cellphone Plans recommendations.

Corresponding T-Mobile plans, such as those for military, first responders and people age 55 and older are also getting refreshed with the new lineup.

T-Mobile’s plan shakeup is being driven in part by the current economic climate. Explaining the rationale behind the price reductions and the streamlined number of plans, Mike Katz, president of marketing, innovation and experience at T-Mobile told CNET, «We’re in a weird time right now where prices everywhere are going up and they’ve happened over the last several years. We felt like there was an opportunity to compete with some simplicity, but more importantly, some peace of mind for customers.»

Existing customers who want to switch to one of the new plans can do so at the same rates offered to new customers. Or, if a current plan still works for them, they can continue without changes (although keep in mind that T-Mobile earlier this year increased prices for some legacy plans).

Five years of price stability

It’s nearly impossible to think about prices these days without warily eyeing how tariffs and US economic policy will affect what we pay for things. So it’s not surprising to see carriers implement some cost stability into their plans. For instance, Verizon recently locked prices for three years on their plans.

Now, T-Mobile is building a five-year price guarantee for its T-Mobile and Metro plans. That pricing applies to talk, text and data amounts — not necessarily taxes and other fees that can fluctuate.

Given the uncertain outlook, it seems counterintuitive to lock in a longer rate. When asked about this, Katz said, «We feel like our job is to solve pain points for customers and we feel like this helps with this exact sentiment. It shifts the risk from customers to us. We’ll take the risk so they don’t have to.»

The price hold applies to new customers signing up for the plans as well as current customers switching to one. T-Mobile is offering the same deals and pricing to new and existing subscribers. Also, the five-year deal applies to pricing; it’s not a five-year plan commitment.

More money and options to encourage switchers

The promise of a five-year price guarantee is also intended to lure people from other carriers, particularly AT&T and Verizon. As further incentive, T-Mobile is offering up to $800 per line (distributed via a virtual prepaid Mastercard) to help pay off other carriers’ device contracts. This is a limited-time offer. There are also options to trade in old devices, including locked phones, to get up to four new flagship phones.

Or, if getting out of a contract isn’t an issue, T-Mobile can offer $200 in credit (up to $800 for four lines) to bring an existing number to the network.

Four new Metro prepaid plans

On the prepaid side, T-Mobile is rolling out four new Metro plans, which are also covered by the new five-year price guarantee:

• Metro Starter costs $25 per line per month for a family of four and there is no need to bring an existing number. (The cost is $105 the first month.)

• Metro Starter Plus runs $40 per month for a new phone, unlimited talk, text and 5G data when bringing an existing number. For $65 per month, new customers can get two lines and two new Samsung A15 phones. No autopay is required.

• Metro Flex Unlimited is $30 per line per month with autopay for four lines ($125 the first month) with unlimited talk, text and 5G data.

• Metro Flex Unlimited Plus costs $60 per line per month, then $35 for lines two and three and then lowers the price of the fourth line to $10 per month as more family members are added. Adding a tablet or smartwatch to an existing line costs $5. And streaming video, such as from the included Amazon Prime membership, comes through at HD quality.

See more: If you’re looking for phone plans, you may also be looking for a new cell phone. Here are CNET’s picks.