Ooh, what’s the phone and who is it with? My contract runs out in May and I’m trying to decide to stick with what I’ve got or move on to a better deal.
My office phones (KDDI and DoCoMo) are free for me, but they would have cost around $35 each if I was paying. My Softbank iPhone costs around $40 a month. It is one of few things in Japan that is surprisingly cheap. Unlimited internet and texting. I dont call anyone, but I guess it is not very expensive either.
I’ll admit there is a distinct possibility.
About $110 - but that is for a “family plan” (two phones). Mine is the smart phone, my SO has just a regular cell phone. He calls more to family, I use mine mostly for web stuff, so it works out fine.
We have the T-Mobile 700 talk minutes per month (more than ample) and no text (don’t need it), but the so-called unlimited web plan.
Too bad there weren’t more subdivisions of the ‘under $40’ category. I’m grandfathered in with a Virgin Mobile deal that costs me all of $20 every 3 months - actually $21.20 with tax.
Yes, I’m paying $7 a month for cell phone service. Nyaah, nyaah! 
Including everything, £30/$60 per month for a smartphone - a Satio that’s due an upgrade soon. I’m not really sure what includes; unlimited data and texts and some ridiculous number of any time any network minutes. We don’t have to pay for incoming calls in the UK.
It would be a fiver less if I didn’t have to call so many 0845 numbers on it, for places like the working tax credits office that don’t have a regional number.
I have unlimited calling, no long distance fees, unlimited text and unlimited data from ATT for my iPhone. International calls are per minute at $.25/minute, but I could add unlimited international service for something like $14/month.
I pay a little over $100/month for the service.
LG Optimus smartphone on Virgin Mobile, 25$ a month with no contract. 300 anytime calling minutes, unlimited web, email, and text. It’s the only smartphone plan I’ve been willing to take on, as most others seem to put me on a locked in contract at 60$ or more per month for voice and data. Screw that.
Virgin Mobile runs over the Sprint network which happens to have good coverage where I’m at, but it’s definitely something to look into first.
sorry, missed this. It’s with 3, the current phone is a Samsung Galaxy mini, and it was an upgrade offer. I think the standard price for the package is £18 a month, which is still peanuts compared to most. One thing I’d be wary of before you decide though, is the signal coverage. 3 seem very patchy, and although I’ve been with them for 5 years now my house is officially in a ‘guaranteed signal only outside’ area. It’s bearable, but I don’t expect to be able to use it very often in my house.
Even before I was agoraphobic, I only used a pay-as-you-go phone. I don’t talk on the phone a lot–the cell was mostly just for emergencies and finding someone I came with at a large store if we split up.
My phone finally went out in January of this year, as every fill-up pushed the final date 3 months in the future for some reason.
I’m not much for phone calls, but I love having constant internet access, especially since my fiance, who is going through Army training in Texas, can talk with me far more often by google talk than he can by phone. We also love to communicate with photos.
I used to have the $25/month Virgin mobile plan. I travel a lot, and the service was way too spotty for me. If I hadn’t had such problems with the service, I would have kept the plan as I liked the phone, and when it worked, it worked well. My fiance and I now share a verizon plan that’s about $120/month for the two of us that includes unlimited text, internet, and some amount of minutes that we never come close to using. We both have Droids, I have the Droid 2, and he has the Droid X.
I’m baffled by the number of people with smartphone plans under $60. I don’t get it at all. I understand that there are lots of non-US respondents and a handful of you that have smartphones and no data plan or something, but how is anyone getting a smartphone with minutes, data and texting for anything shy of $70 these days?
Ha, I was about to post that I’m baffled by the amount of people with smartphones costing more than £50. I could see it if you’re a super important businessperson who’s making and receiving long overseas calls every day, but otherwise, how are you racking up all these fees? Even iPhone packages aren’t costing more than £35-40 monthly these days.
Ah, excellent, thank you! I’m already on 3 so I’m used to their eccentric service areas, and like you have learned to manage. 
Nokia E7 smart phone + normal calling plan + (not the cheapest) mobile data plan = 30e/month for 24 months here in Finland. There were cheaper ones too, some as low as ~20e a month, and this was just the first service provider I bothered to check. If I want to pay 70 USD a month I’ll have to really try.
There’s a reason nobody here has a landline any more.
This is what Sprint says about the plan I have:
[QUOTE=Sprint’s Webisite]
Everything Data Family - with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM
[…]
Any Mobile, Anytime: Unlimited domestic calls from the Sprint network to and from ANY U.S. mobile phone regardless of carrier. Any network, any time.
Unlimited data on our network: Web surfing, email, BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS), GPS Navigation, Sprint TV and Radio, NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM
Unlimited messaging: Text, pictures and video
Talk: Night calling and weekends starting at 7 p.m., nationwide long distance and no roaming charges. Lines 1-2 included. Lines 3-5 are $19.99/mo./line.
[/quote]
I (we) have three lines on the 1500 minute version of that plan. The retail price for that is ~$150 / month. I get a discount from that price because the company I work for does a LOT of business with Sprint, but even without that, we would pay $50/line. If you have more lines (up to 5), the cost per line drops but it’s harder to stay within your minutes.
If you want, they have a plan with unlimited talk as well, but it is of course more expensive.
In the US on AT&T and Verizon, the two dominant carriers who have pretty much all the coveted smartphones, the cheapest voice option is 450/500 minutes for $40. On top of that the cheapest texting plan is an extra $10 and the cheapest data plan is an extra $15. So for the minimum for all three services is $65 plus at least $5 in taxes and fees. Those plans on AT&T only come with 1000 texts and 200 MB of data per month. Personally I’d be pushing exactly those boundries for each month so it’d be most practical to upgrade both to the next teir for an extra $20 getting you to about $90.
On T-Mobile and Sprint you can go cheaper if you aren’t commited to a particular phone but the cheapest minute plans with text and data are both $70 there before taxes.
Long story short, in the US based on me research it seems impossible to get a plan for under $70 unless you’re going the family route and sharing a bigger chunk of minutes or getting some discount plan. The ratios in the poll seem really skewed, I can’t believe that this many respondents are either foreigners or using family plans that are under that threshhold. I just priced out a family plan on AT&T for 2 smartphones for me and my g/f and we only saved about $10 and even with the bare minimum options we would still have been over $70 with taxes.
Virgin Mobile Smartphone: $25/month for unlimited data, unlimited text, 300 minutes talk. It runs on the Sprint network.
If you want more talking minutes, the next plan up is for 1200 minutes talking including the unlimited data & text for $40/month. The only tax you pay is regular sales tax. The phone itself, LG Optimus V cost $129 on sale, but it’s not on sale right now. As soon as it goes back on sale somewhere, I’m switching over my daughter.
On TMobile our taxes were never less than $15/month, usually closer to $20.