If you’re an AT&T customer looking to upgrade your smartphone mid-contract, beware, your upgrade pricing options just got a lot more expensive.

As first noted by Boy Genius Report, AT&T has raised its smartphone early upgrade fee to $200 on top of the new two-year contract price. Before October 3, when the new policy went into effect, it was $75 to upgrade your smartphone before the 18-month mark in a two-year contract.

An internal AT&T store document said that the new policy, which does not affect the iPhone () or feature phones, is necessary because of the rising prices of smartphone devices.

Frankly, I’m impressed the early upgrade fee was ever as low as $75 for smartphones. As it stands, the $200 early upgrade fee will still end up costing you less than buying a phone without extending your contract, at least in most circumstances. AT&T used the BlackBerry Torch as an example; the phone, which is $199.99 with a two-year contract, is now $399.99 for customers who agree to early upgrades. The no-commitment price is $499.99, so a customer saves $100 so long as they don’t mind adding more time onto their contract.

Realistically, most consumers are probably fine keeping a phone — especially a smartphone — for 18 months, especially if that means they can upgrade to a new phone for less money. The policy really affects customers who lose a phone or for phones that break after the one-year manufacturer warranty period but before the 18-month mark.

AT&T is sure to be criticized for the new policy, but at least in the U.S., the company isn’t alone with its early upgrade practices. Early upgrade pricing has increased across the board with major carriers. Beyond that, early termination fees are on the rise too. AT&T raised its early-termination fee from $175 to $325 earlier this year. Verizon still “wins” (or loses, depending on how you look at it) that contest; the nation’s largest carrier charges $350 to terminate a contract for an “advanced device.”

While it’s easy to point to European tariff models that combine phone service and device fees into the monthly bill or that sell phones at unsubsidized pricing as a better model, the failure of the Nexus One shows that prospect isn’t necessarily compelling for U.S. consumers. Frankly, we’re not really sure of anyone in the world who is happy with the cost associated with buying or upgrading his or her cellphone. It’s an expensive process that has only become more expensive now that smart phones are essentially pocket computers.

Mashable () readers, how often do you upgrade your smartphone? Would a $200 early upgrade fee prevent you from getting a new device, or is it worth it to have the latest and greatest thing?

Initial reactions to the iPhone 4 have been pretty spectacular, with an estimated 1.5 million units sold during the first day andlines that lasted hours, but what was reception like on Twitter? While we know that the World Cup and President Obama topped the iPhone 4 pre-buzz, we still wanted to take a look at some deeper Twitter analysis.

Real-time social media tracker Trendrr was nice enough to offer us some data of the iPhone 4 and also AT&T over various periods of time.

Trendrr’s analysis covers both quantity and sentiment analysis, and we’ll examine those data points.

---

iPhone Tweets By the Numbers

---

Looking at the data on mentions of “iPhone” from November 2008 to the present, a few points really stood out. First, we should note that as of right now, Trendrr does not have full data for any days after June 22, 2010. We have hourly statistics (see below), but not full data info for an entire day.

iPhone (Matching Twitter Posts per Day)

Key: iphone (source: Matching Twitter Posts per Day)

>

Note the two gigantic spikes in the graph. The first occurs on June 17, 2009. This was the day that the iOS (or iPhone OS) 3.0 software was released. The next spike was on June 7, 2010, the official announcement of the iPhone 4. On June 7, Trendrr says that 653,000 tweets containing the phrase “iPhone” were sent.

Next, let’s take a look at an hour-by-hour examination, which started on Saturday and ran through the 25th.

iPhone (Matching Twitter Posts per Hour)

Key: iphone (source: Matching Twitter Posts per Hour)

Again, note the big spikes throughout the day of the 24th, with the phrase “iPhone” peaking at 55,537 tweets per hour.

---

AT&T and iPhone Sentiment Analysis

---

We find sentiment analysis really interesting, and the figures for the iPhone 4 offer some food for thought. While some have expected the overall net sentiment to be positive, the results are actually quite different.

iPhone (Twitter Sentiment)

Key: iphone (source: Twitter Sentiment % Negative) iphone (source: Twitter Sentiment % Positive)

Sentiment started out more positive than not for the term “iPhone,” but negative remarks started showing up on Monday, June 21. At that time, 25% of all tweets about the iPhone were deemed “negative.” However, this was before the iPhone 4 started to arrive to users, so we’re not really sure what contributed to the negativity, other than overexposure, perhaps.

The negative tweets died down again, and we started to see more positive tweets on June 22 and June 23, with positive and negative mentions in roughly equal amounts on Wednesday. Here’s where it gets interesting: 28% of the iPhone-related tweets on June 24, 2010 were negative. How many of these negative tweets were related to long lines or sold out stores, we don’t know.

As of today, June, 25, the positive tweets have edged past the negative tweets once again.

Moving onto everyone’s favorite whipping boy, AT&T. AT&T is not a popular company. In fact, it’s an oft-cited reason that people don’t get an iPhone. Still, looking at the data that goes back to May, it does look like the company had a few bright spots.

AT&T (Twitter Sentiment)

Key: at&t (source: Twitter Sentiment % Positive) at&t (source: Twitter Sentiment % Negative)

We’re not really sure why AT&T had such big spikes on May 22, 2010 and June 6, 2010, but those are the only two days the positives outweighed the negatives. Not surprisingly, on June 15, 2010, the day the iPhone became available for pre-order, AT&T had a 35% negativity percentage. Maybe it was the failed activation system.

The negativity cooled down a bit, but as of June 24, 2010, the negative tweets had reached 44%, according to Trendrr.