I have a Tracfone–buying phone time, texts & web access from prepaid cards.
Question–do apps burn online time when you use them? Or just on download? And, if it varies by type, which does what?
The vast majority of apps do some type of on-line communication.
There are self-contained apps (the Compass app, or maybe a flashlight app), but most useful apps need to connect to a server to get necessary information.
Even apps that have no need for on-line access still do it - to sell ads.
What type of app are you looking for?
A binocular app, or perhaps a chance to play chess against a computer.
Well, look at the specs of the app, and see if it works w/o an internet connection.
Data plans are usually sold not by the “online minute”, but by the gigabyte:
https://www.tracfone.com/serviceplan/smartphone
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = ~1 million kilobytes (kB).
A typical in-app advertisement might be 50-100 kB. A high-res photo might be 400-800 kB. On Tracfone, though, it’s pay-per-GB so every single ad you see costs you money (pennies, but still). Do you have WiFi at home? If so, you can just connect to that instead of paying for Tracfone’s super expensive data.
So it depends on which apps you’re using, and for what. A chess app should use almost negligible data even if you’re playing online, especially if you pay for a version without advertisements.
What is a binocular app? Not sure what that is. You mean zooming in with the phone’s built-in camera? You don’t need an app for that, just go to the camera and zoom in without taking a picture.
I’ve never used a trac-phone but I know on iPhones you can go into settings and toggle the data on/off for every individual app you have.
Last time I looked, Trackphone deducted 1 minute of time for every megabyte of data. A 90 minute card costs $20, but if you buy the phone during the right promotion, you get triple minutes for life. Still, that is $20 for 270 MB of data.
I am totally in the wrong business. That racket makes selling heroin seem unprofitable.
Isn’t that only for dumb phones? Can they run apps these days? Tracfone has different plans for smartphones
Looks like they do have some slightly better price options now. No Contract 5G Prepaid Plans & Smartphones - Tracfone
I already own the phone.
About apps–free is not always better than paid, true?
Yes, but paid is not always better than free. Really depends on the app.
The “free” ones almost always have some type of in-app purchase nagware or ads.
Even if you can’t turn off data for individual apps, you can certainly turn it off for the entire phone (probably not a bad idea, at those rates). And most apps that display ads will still function without data, just not showing the ads. So turn off your data, go somewhere with free WiFi to download the apps you want, and try them out.
Some free apps are terrible, but for any given niche there are enough apps out there that you can usually find something that works well enough without being too annoying for free.