Starting August 12th, Sprint will be offering customers a free 7-inch ZTE Optik tablet with the purchase of any smartphone. That means, anyone wishing to, could actually grab the free Sprint Samsung Galaxy Nexus and walk away with a free tablet!

So what’s the catch? Well, for starters, the ZTE Optik isn’t your top-of-the-line household tablet, in fact, it’s still stuck on Honeycomb and probably will be forever. Plus, you have to sign a 2-year data contract for the tablet, which uses 3G data.

Your “free” tablet will actually end up costing you a minimum of $840 when all is said and done. So if you prefer spending $840 on an outdated ZTE 3G tablet rather than picking up something like the 16GB WiFi Nexus 7 for $250, be our guest, but we’re going to file this one under “bad deal.”

If a Sprint customer rep is trying to sell you on this deal and you reach out to the trusty internet for answers, here’s one for you: politely tell the Sprint rep “Thanks, but no thanks.”

• SourceTechnoBuffalo
• ViaAndroid Police