I didn’t notice anybody here saying they paid that much. To spend that much, you would have to buy a new, top-of-the-line phone without any contract subsidies. The whole point of this thread is how to get a smartphone without paying such exorbitant amounts.
And a smartphone is a hell of a lot more than just a phone. There are so many practical uses for them besides talking on the phone, that the phone part of it is just added value. They really do open up a whole new world of possibilities, as cheesy as that may sound.
That’s why the plan I recommended is $30 a month. You can’t even get a home phone line + high-speed internet access for that cheap. And for a lot of people (not me) who don’t use a lot of data at home, a smartphone plan with a 5gb monthly uncapped-speed limit can completely replace their home phone and/or internet access bill, while actually spending LESS money. (free tethering, FTW)
Well, mine is nowhere near as much as that, but I do need a phone with at least email capability for work purposes. There are cheaper phones, but not by much - may as well spend a little extra and get a phone that has a lot more functionality. It’s a good music player with more memory than older ipods (and new ipods cost quite a lot), has lots of games and has a big enough screen to be used for e-reading and web surfing.
This. If you have plenty of access to wifi, then an iPod Touch will do all the smart phone stuff without a monthly plan. I use mine to text and surf and check emails and a million other things and have an inexpensive dumb phone for making the occasional phone call.
I could almost have written this post, except that I have a different phone. That was the best deal I could find, but now I’m interested in voltaire’s $30/month T-Mobile plan. That T-Mobile plan might not work for me though, because it only has 100 minutes for phone calls vs. the 300 minutes I get with Virgin Mobile.
P.S. I went with the HTC Wildfire phone because I wanted the smallest possible phone since I often carry it in a pocket. If I need to use the internet through my phone (and wifi is not available), I tether the phone to my iPod Touch and use that one instead since it has a bigger screen.
Question for those of you with iPhones: do you really do a lot of web browsing with it? With my iPod Touch, I find that most webpages are too small to read and it’s a pain.
In general, you should see much better coverage/reception and data speed on Tmobile compared to Virgin, depending on your area, of course.
Tmobile runs it’s own network and has (free to the customer) roaming agreements with other carriers, including a new one with AT&T under good terms following their failed merger/buyout/whatever.
Virgin is an MVNO which resells Sprint’s network (which I’ve had bad past experiences with on a dumb phone) and there are no roaming agreements like you would get if you had service directly through Sprint. That means you either get a Sprint signal through your Virgin phone, or you’re SOL.
As far as data speeds are concerned on a Virgin phone, my research indicated that Sprint rather ruthlessly caps the speeds on Virgin and the other resellers of their bandwidth. It makes sense, since it would be stupid of them to allow competitors to sell their same product for cheaper, if it performed just as well.
Also, their selection of compatible smartphones is rather scant and uninspiring. The thing with the current state of smartphones/plans in the U.S. is this: For a lot of reasons, you really want a GSM phone that use SIM cards, and the only two major U.S. carriers that currently support that are AT&T and Tmobile. Some minor exceptions to that GSM/SIM rule are starting to emerge with small, regional carriers migrating to 4G/LTE, but as it currently stands I wouldn’t recommend anything but a GSM phone. And since I loathe AT&T and the games they play, Tmobile gets my unequivocal recommendation.
Why GSM phones? Without getting too technical and talking even over my own head:
First of all, and IMO most significantly, the phone selection is vastly superior, since it’s what most of the rest of the world uses.
Because it’s what most of the rest of the world uses, if you ever need to use your phone traveling abroad, all you need to do is purchase a cheap prepaid SIM card where ever your travels take you, slip it into your phone, and you’re ready to go. A CDMA/non-GSM phone (Verizon/Sprint/etc.) will be a useless brick in most of the rest of the world.
Have you heard of how an iPhone on Verizon is unable to do data while you’re talking on the phone? That’s a limitation due to Verizon’s CDMA-network that GSM-network phones don’t have. You can have a conversation with somebody while making plans for an outing, and look up the relevant info without hanging up and calling them back, then having to look up something else, and having to hang up and call them back again.
Wow, Those costs are astronomical. Are those really typical USA prices? I don’t think we realise how lucky we are this side of the pond.
I bought an unlocked ZTE skate for £100 (GPS, 3G all the bells and whistles) a cheap phone but as yet I haven’t come across anything I want it to do that it can’t.
And I have a GiffGaff pay as you go account that costs me £10 a month for 250 free minutes and unlimited texts and data.
At home, I’m running my iPhone off my Wi-Fi connection and I surf on it more than on my PC. It’s more comfortable for me to lay in bed or kick back on the couch than it is to sit at the computer. I don’t find it hard to read at all. If something’s too small to read, I either pinch to zoom in or change the font size. In fact, I’m posting this from my iPhone.
I can vouch for that. My work phone is through Verizon (I’d stick with that, except they don’t pay for data/texts) and my work and play often brings me to remote areas. Verizon’s network will usually work, but once I’m off the interstates and away from major metropolitan areas, T-Mobile won’t get a signal at all.
I debated switching to Verizon for our personal phones, but for the services we get from T-Mobile and pay $80/mo. for (1000 min./unlimited text/unlimited web), Verizon charges ~$160/mo. :eek:
I just wanted to hop in and to promote the 30$ tmobile plan as well.
It’s great.
Buying a phone off-contract is expensive, but worth it in the long run. Moving from my grandfathered AT&T iphone plan to this new tmobile plan, even after buying a 600$ top-of-the-line phone my payback period is about 8 months after which I’m saving significant money each month( >50$ ).
You can save an additional dollar or two/month by buying tmobile refills online at a slight discount. I buy from www.callingmart.com and I think I average about 28$/month. (it’s trivial to find additional online coupons for this place, just google)
Yeah, I guess you have to consider the relative costs of running a cell phone network for a larger landmass and population. The larger landmass means having to install and maintain many more antennas, and the larger population means they have to have more capacity to handle simultaneous calls. Also, many (most?) plans that I’m aware of include free calls to Canada, as well. That’s a pretty huge area and population to cover.
Do your typical plans over there usually include calls outside of the U.K.?
yep, I can see how that would drive the restrictive nature of the US market. Still seems excessive though.
As for international calls, some plans will include them or you can buy some form of “bolt-on” fairly cheaply. I’ve certainly seen £10-20 giving you 100/200 minutes to 3/5 nominated international numbers.
Or if you don’t call abroad often then just pay for them as you make them.Here’s the tariffs for my plan, Calling the USA or Europe is 8-16p per minute, so not that expensive at all.
My phone (a Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini pro) was £100 secondhand on ebay. I pay £20 a month for the line for I think 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 500 GB data. Whatever it is, I’ve only ever gone over the limit when I used the phone abroad. I’ve had it 6 months, so so far it’s cost me £220.
For me it’s well worth it, but my phone is essentially a portable internet, email, texting & GPS device that handily can also be used to make phone calls. I don’t drive, so don’t have a satnav and I use google maps at least weekly, use the internet and email almost hourly. It has a smallish screen, but the browser is pretty clever at making webpages readable and I can browse most pages fairly comfortably on it.
I should switch to GiffGaff as it would halve my running costs, but I’ve been wondering about getting a new phone and can’t decide whether I would buy it up front or go the contract route, so haven’t yet. I quite fancy trying a windows phone, but it would be a lot more expensive and considering I quite like my current phone I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Assuming the £20 a month you quoted was per month with no fee for the phone up front, then if you’re on a 24 month contract you’ll be paying £480 (~$750) over the contract. Of course if it’s a 12 month contract it’ll be half that.
This, except a different android smartphone. I’ve been really happy so far (it’s been about 4 months). I don’t use the phone part much so 300 minutes is plenty for me.
My estimate is that even if you get a free iPhone with a 2-year contract, the Virgin Mobile plan saves about $1000 over the 2-year period.