Do not buy a new Laptop or Smartphone before coming to US. If you need a new one urgently to an extent where you current machines are destroyed, only then purchase one.

You’ll get student offers and discounted rates for smartphones and laptops here in the USA easily.

Smartphones

Some key events to buy new phones when coming in Fall

• The Iphone launch events happen around second week of September, so incase you intend to buy a new Iphone, this is the best time. If you buy a new one you get the latest technology to try out, incase you were planning to buy a previous model, they get cheaper due to the current launch event.
• Either way its a WIN WIN for you.

Laptops

For Computer Science students, Macbook is usually the commonly chosen option. However if you are into AR/VR development and also like to game occasionally a Gaming Laptop (with GPUs) is the common choice.

You can checkout BestBuy, Walmart, Target or Amazon for discounts. Walmart has a great thing known as price match which you should explore and you can also try out Back to School Student discounts are Target every Fall.