Anyone have a Nexus 4 or doing a prepaid smartphone thing?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s weird, I’m a gadget guy but I’m the last guy in the world to get a smartphone. I hate making commitments to big bills and contracts and I don’t want to pay $85/mo for a phone I wouldn’t use all that much. I get by with a cheap prepaid cell + ipod touch to do 90% of my smartphone needs.

But I’ve used the touch so much that the battery is almost worn out, so I was thinking instead of paying $250 for a new one, I might as well spend $350 for a Nexus 4. It’s apparently remarkably awesome for the money (yes, your iphone 5 only cost you $200, but that’s the subsidized contract price, the actual cost is more like $650, you end up paying for it through your 2 year contract, whereas the Nexus 4 you actually own for $300-350).

It’s GSM so AT&T/T-Mobile - are there other GSM carriers? I kinda want Verizon except that it seems T-Mobile has the best prepaid plan anyway. $30/mo gets you 100 minutes and 5gb of data. I hardly use the minutes anyway, I mostly want the data plan. Plus you could always use Skype or google voice or something to make and receive voice calls over the data plan anyway, right?

Anyway, it seems like a pretty reasonable way to get into having a smartphone without a big commitment. You pay some more upfront, but you save in the long term, and you’re not bound to any contract or carrier.

Anyone else using the Nexus 4 and/or any prepaid smartphone? What are your experiences?

2

I don’t have one because I’m locked into an old Sprint discount plan, but I know a couple of people who have T-Mobile Straight Talk plans for their Nexus 4s and love them.

edit: Of course we have decent T-Mobile coverage around here. YMMV.

3

Of course my phone was premade, what do you think I am; Chinese?

4

I have exactly that $30 tmobile plan for my Nexus 4, and have been very pleased with it. The HSPA+ coverage around here is good, so data speeds are quite fast. Definitely make sure tmobile has a solid presence around where you are though, if you’re not near a decently sized city, you might have issues.

You can’t use google voice for voip, but I know folks that use skype without problems. Although I think they use it mostly just on wifi, not the data connection.

Minutes beyond the first 100 are only 10 cents each, so if you blow through it early, it’s not so bad if you need to sneak in a couple extra calls (compared to paying an extra $30 a month or whatever for more minutes).

5

Yeah, T-Mobile coverage is fine near me but I read somewhere that the prepaid plans don’t include the T-Mobile “partners”, which covers a lot of the areas between cities. Can anyone confirm?

Are there any other prepaid smartphone plans that are worth considering?

6

I have the T-Mobile $30 plan and drove from Pittsburgh to Florida last summer. I had voice service the whole way but for parts of the trip had no data (and it was at one of these points, of course, that there was a crisis at work which led to me talking a coworker through database changes on a system he was unfamiliar with). I could be remembering wrong but I believe my phone was reporting it was on AT&T’s network at those times. And here’s the cite Wikipedia uses to backup the claim that prepaid has access to roaming: http://web.archive.org/web/20080702200032/http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/coverageprepaidfaq.aspx

ETA: My general daily experience is no different than it was when I had Verizon. The main difference is that I don’t feel like I’m getting ripped off every month.

7

I have a Nexus 4 with “straight talk” the Wal-Mart product using AT&T towers. I love it, unlimited talk, text and data for $45 a month. The problem I have is that I think it’s being phased out. Wal-Mart . com has stopped selling the micro-SIM cards and the rumor is that the data portion is going to start being seriously squeezed.

I don’t know anything about Net10 but they are selling the AT&T compatible micro SIMs for $15 on Wal-Mart . com and it looks like unlimited talk, text and data is $50 a month, but do your research.

The best part is that they are all non-contract plans, so if you make a bad choice in provider you can switch the providers until you find one you like.

8

NET10 AT&T data is not truly unlimited. It is capped at 1.5 GB every 30 days.

9

I have an older Android phone with Tmobile’s 100-minute/unlimited text/unlimited web plan for $30, and I love it. But if I were buying a new phone, it would definitely be a Nexus4.

A few points:

You can still get the above plan if it best suits your needs, but you might find Tmobile’s new plans, which are being marketed under “GoSmart Mobile” branding, even more attractive. To quote myself quoting myself (;)) from aprevious thread:

(The reference to “T-Metro” there was in reference to the fact that Tmobile just completed the purchase of MetroPCS and will eventually begin merging the two networks, which will lead to even better Tmobile service in areas where MetroPCS currently has a footprint.)

So, $15 more a month to upgrade from 100 voice minutes to unlimited, which might be worth it if you use a lot of minutes, or just rather not worry about refilling/maintaining an extra balance of minutes - it’s still much more reasonable than any unlimited contract plan. The unlimited low speed data plan might seem attractive if you don’t use a lot of data, or will almost exclusively be using data on wifi, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to regularly use a lot of data while out and about.

As far as VoIP, if you do go with the 100 voice minute plan, you can make very good use of Google Voice combined with a ~$5 app called GrooveIP to make voice calls without using voice minutes, as long as you’re getting very good, relatively low-latency data speeds.

ETA: FYI, you currently have an admirer in the Pit, in case you didn’t already know. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

AFAIK, the ONLY truly unlimited data plan available in the U.S. is through a Sprint on-contract plan. Just be prepared to pay for it. And that STILL doesn’t mean they won’t throttle your speed at some unspecified level/duration of usage, if they think you’re using too much of their bandwidth for too long.

At Tmobile anyway, “unlimited” means unlimited speeds up to a quite generous and ample 5gb a month. No charges or fees if you go over, they just throttle your speed down for the remainder of the month. (Though, I have heard of ways of temporarily getting around that speed throttling.)

11

Oh yeah, forgot that I also wanted to confirm that all actual Tmobile brand plans, including prepaid plans, include roaming. But something I just now learned is that the GoSmart Mobile brand plans do NOT have roaming.

And without looking, I’m almost sure that the Walmart-sold StraightTalk rebranded service doesn’t include roaming either. It’s pretty much standard that discount/rebranded “MVNO” services don’t include roaming. Such services include Virgin, BoostMobile, NET10, TracPhone, PagePlus, etc.

I just didn’t realize that GoSmart was considered an MVNO, since it’s wholly owned my Tmobile. But I guess it makes sense, since they went through the trouble of rebranding for a reason. Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile are similar in that they’re both owned and operated by Sprint, selling a discount version of their flagship product.

12

I’m in the process of switching from Verizon using an LG phone to T-Mobile’s prepaid $30/mo. plan with an unlocked iPhone 5, and so far, T-Mobile is making it a pain in the ass.

Last week, I bought the microsim card from T-Mobile’s online store and trimmed it to nano size and got it in my iPhone with no issues. When I went to activate the card online, however, a flaw in the coding of the payment page rendered it useless to me. See, when you choose to pay by debit or credit card, the page that loads is supposed to have a menu or widget that lets you pick what day you want to set your auto-pay. And you’re required to have this date specified before you can complete the activation. Unfortunately, the menu/widget is broken. It consistently fails to load. There’s no error message nor any sign that something is wrong other than the site insisting you provide information without giving you a place to put it.

Since the first step in this activation process is entering your activation code, by the time you discover this flaw, it’s too late, the site considers your activation code used. At no point do you log in, so you can’t log out and resume things on a different browser.

I did some Googling and others have had this same problem. One guy was kind enough to flag the bad Javascript and suggested how to fix it. But T-Mobile’s support seems unable to advise anything beyond “buy another SIM card and use a different browser to activate it.”

With my SIM card made useless, I thought of the T-Mobile store near my office and decided to drop by there to pick up another SIM card, and this time, a prepaid card. There were two employees working, one Obviously New Guy and his Experienced Supervisor. I asked for a microsim card and a prepaid card. It took about 20 minutes to complete my transaction because ONG didn’t know how to use the POS software and had to keep asking ES for help. ONG also didn’t hear me ask for a prepaid card. When I repeated myself, he looked confused and asked ES what that was. ES told me there was no such thing as a prepaid card. Having seen prepaid cards for sale on the T-Mobile online store, and having been asked if I wanted to use one during my failed online activation attempt, I knew this was wrong, but I decided I would live a longer, happier life if I just feigned acceptance and left. (Later, I would find that the Rite-Aid not 30 yards away has a whole bunch of T-Mobile prepaid cards for sale.)

When I got home, I discovered that ONG gave me a SIM card but failed to include the jacket that had the activation code number on it. I also found he had given me a regular SIM and not the microsim I’d asked for. The SIM card was both totally useless and unusable to me.

I went back to the T-Mobile online store and re-ordered a microsim and a prepaid card. They should be in the mailbox when I get home today. I am hoping to get this set up tonight so I can resume not having to interact with my cell phone carrier.

13

I had issues activating my account online, as well. I’m not sure what went wrong but the online customer service was able to fix it.

And i get the prepaid cards at Target. Keep an eye out because they’ll sometimes have sales.

14

Not that it matters now, but you can trim a regular SIM card to nano size for an iPhone5. And I wouldn’t be very surprised if the SIM card he gave you was a contract SIM, not a prepaid SIM, and the reason he kept the activation number is because he’s used to doing (or wanted to do) the activation right there in the store, where they probably get commission or job performance credit of some sort.

And the thing about the oft-mentioned $30 prepaid plan is that it’s an “online only” deal, and they wouldn’t have been able to activate that plan for you in the store. (It used to be that way, at least.)

What sucks is those SIMs used to only cost 99 cents with free shipping, and now they’re $10! :frowning: I guess with so many people having to cut up SIM cards these days, people were messing them up a lot and burdening TMO by ordering a lot of SIMs that never got used. I imagine there were probably a lot of ebayers buying 'em for .99 and selling pre-cut SIMs for a tidy markup, too.

15

Virgin Mobile doesn’t have a prepaid plan, but it’s unlimited data and texting and 300 minutes of talk for $35 a month. They use the Sprint network, so if you’ve got good Sprint coverage in the area, they’re a good bet.

16

Thanks for the link.

The guy seemed really new, so I think there’s just as good a chance that he went into the back room and grabbed the first SIM card he could find.

Thanks for the Target tip, Rand.

17

I’m pretty sure Virgin has nothing but prepaid plans. It’s possible they do have some weird contract plans I’ve never heard of, but the vast majority of their business is selling prepaid plans.

18

Title edited from premade to prepaid.

19

I guess it depends on what you mean by “pre-paid”. Every month, I pay $35 for the upcoming month. There’s no contract, and I cancel at any time. When you say “pre-paid”, I think of those services where you put twenty bucks in now and then use it up gradually, then put more money in when you need it.

20

Yep, you pre-pay for your “pre-paid” phone service. The other thing you’re thinking of is known as pay-as-you-go, or sometimes pay-go or similar.