I have an iPhone 6S that I replaced with an iPhone SE when its battery died. (It wasn’t that much more for the SE, than it would have been to replace the battery.) I thought I’d get a new battery for the 6S so I could use it as a camera, but then I thought ‘Why not have it functional?’ So…
Who has a pre-paid cell phone service that I can buy, that has minutes that don’t expire?
T-Mobile sort of does.
I had to prepay a year’s worth (I don’t know how they define a “year” when I’m pay-as-you-go but somehow it makes sense to them). It makes me a “gold star” plan user. My prepaid dollars don’t expire as long as I top it off at least once every 12 months. It’s worth putting on your calendar and contacting their support number and making sure everyone’s on the same page about it, but I’ve had the plan for about 22 years now (I was originally on a Nokia flip phone, now I’m on a new iPhone, same plan).
I’ve thought about getting a Nokia ringtone for my iPhone.
Former employee of T-Mobile here, and as understand it that is a grandfathered plan that is no longer offered: so don’t (!) forget that, or you may have to jump through hoops to get it renewed. Very few companies offer minutes based plans anymore, or phone/text with no data anymore, but they exist with some shopping.
For a just in case phone I normally recommend no plan, and keep the phone for the ability to dial 911 (which doesn’t require a cell plan) or T-Mobile’s Connect plan - the most basic of which is a $10 per month, for 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 1G of data. So $120 year before fees. It’s a solid option for a phone you leave in the car for emergencies with a charger (because such things will be out of charge when you need it).
I’m sure there are other, similar good value to money options, but since I worked for them, it’s easier for me to find their stuff.
Nobody.
Well Tracfone has minutes which don’t expire, but you still have to pay for each month or year for service.
Basically there are lot of options for a few dollars a month for low usage users. See for example:
Appreciate the warning, ParalleLines.
If I could change anything, it would be to include data in the pay-as-you-go plan. Almost entirely so that Uber would work without me having to be on a WiFi network.
But I don’t want to have to use up my prepaid minutes before some expiration date, that’s for sure. My fancy late-model iPhone sits in its charging cradle and on most days I use it exactly once, to supply the two-factor authentication that lets me work from home on my laptop. The other day it showed me a message, some kind of usage statistics that said my average daily usage rate was up to 1 minute per day, an increase over last week.