Disposable cell phones - got one?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been interested in getting a disposable cell phone for over a year. I wouldn’t use a conventional cell phone enough to justify the $30-40/month subscription.

I recently read on the 'net that Walgreen’s sells them now - here’s a company that makes them:
http://www.hop-on.com/

Here’s a review:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946879.html

Here’s another:
http://www.eetimes.com/story/6873

Apparently, you can add minutes to the phone - 60 minutes for $18, which is fine for me.

My concern is that these reviews are over a year old - I haven’t found any newer ones. What gives? Any dopers have a disposable cell phone? What do you think about them?

2

I used to have a Pay-as-you-go Cell Phone because my credit was not good enough for a POST BILLING phone.

It was great. I paid $100 and got $50 rebate in 3 months. The smallest minutes i could get was 100, at $25. This worked great, cuz if i ran out of minutes, i’d just buy another 100 or more. And since I was not on a contract or on any “cycle”, my minutes were mine until i chose to use them.

The best part… they didn’t have my real name… so I could have used the phone for , uhm, criminal intent, then just (discreatly) toss it out the car window on the express way. (powered off).

Ahem, i didn’t do anything like that, but I sold the phone for $100 to someone who needed a disposable cell phone. I thought that was what this thread was about. :eek:

3

More than 100 million users in China use disposable cell phones.

4

What, exactly, makes a phone disposable? Is it the lack of contract, meaning that any pre-paid or pay as you go phone is disposable?

5

ABout 4 months ago I got a phone from Virgin. It is for my kids to take if they will be somewhere where it is not easy to get in touch, e.g. at the pool or tennis courts. You have to put $20 every 90 days or it will self-destruct or something (actually, it will become deactivated). It works fine. See here.

6

Here in Australia everyone is getting what we call PrePaids that are cheap deals that you buy credits for as you go. The savvy uni students near me buy a card for every network and swap them to get the best rates when calling. They just leave in the one with their real phone number when not making outward calls.

The advantage is you can buy your kid a phone for next to nothing and not worry about them running up ruinous bills. You’d be amazed how many children in Australia carry them now for emergencies…and SMS.