Well, you’re like me except for awesome!
Yep. If you’re easily overwhelmed to begin with, and would like a smartphone, Apple makes it easy, both in options and interface. Great product too.
I like to have a phone in the car in case I break down.
So the way I decided was: the cheapest pay-as-you go phone I could find.
I bought my first cell phone in 2001. I had 2 or 3 roommates where I was staying at and trying to use the landline just got annoying.
I went with Sprint because Verizon had turned me down for a job a couple years ago! I don’t even remember the phone I got, but it was free.
Out of curiosity, why did you feel that AT&T proposing to buy Tmobile was a fiasco that left you with a distaste for Tmobile? Even if you were under contract with Tmobile, and even if the deal went through, AT&T would either have to honor your existing contract, or allow you to opt-out, neither of which seem objectionable to me. I can understand not liking AT&T and not wanting to become their customer, but why did that sour you on Tmobile now that the deal is all but scrapped. (BTW, Tmobile and AT&T subsequently struck a spectrum-sharing/roaming agreement that should improve Tmobile’s service reach and quality.)
I actually switched into Tmobile around September, in the middle of the whole proposed merger/buyout. I researched extensively, and found Tmobile to be the best option for me. I bought a HTC G2 Android phone (with physical keyboard) used on Ebay for $140, and got a no-contract/prepaid Tmobile plan for $30 a month which gives me 100 voice minutes a month, unlimited 4g data, and unlimited texts. Voice minutes in excess of the 100 a month are only .10 a minute, which is quite reasonable, specially if you rarely talk for long periods of time. (BTW, if anyone is interested in this particular plan, it is only available through Tmobile’s website or Walmart, not at any actual Tmobile retail stores. You can PM me if you have any questions.)
But to make that plan even sweeter, I then got a Google Voice phone number (which is free) and an app called GrooveIP ($4.99 one-time cost in Android market) which allows you to talk through Google Voice without using minutes. It can use either wifi or the phone’s 4g data connection to route calls, and since I have unlimited data, I effectively have unlimited free voice minutes. The other nice thing is that I have it set up through Google Voice that when someone calls that number, it forwards the call and rings my landline, my regular cell phone line, and my GrooveIP app simultaneously, allowing me to choose which one to answer depending on where I am. As long as I’m home, or somewhere with a good 4g data or wifi signal, I don’t use any minutes. So, it’s extremely easy for me to stay under the 100 voice minutes a month, but at 10 cents a minute if you go over, it wouldn’t be a big deal if I did.
Regarding choice of carriers:
Right now in the U.S., if you want the most flexibility, particularly if you want a smartphone and/or may be traveling abroad, the BEST way to go is with either AT&T and Tmobile. Why, because to the best of my knowledge these are the only two major companies using GSM phones, which use SIM cards and are what most of the rest of the world uses. That means if you want to switch carriers or travel abroad, all you need to do is slip the appropriate prepaid/no-contract (cheap/free) SIM card in and you’re ready to go.
If you don’t want/need a smartphone, and don’t plan on ever traveling abroad and needing a phone, other carriers such as Cricket or Virgin might be right for you. Otherwise, GSM phones are the way to go, and right now that = either Tmobile or AT&T.
What I did was ask everyone I knew in my area which carrier and plan they had, and how happy they were.
People are pretty honest when it comes to cell phones.
At the time I asked (about 10 years ago) the people with AT&T all regretted having it - service sucked (here in Las Vegas) and it was too expensive with few plans to choose from.
The people with Sprint made me promise NOT to go with Sprint and all of them told me they were dropping the service the second the contracts ended. I don’t think Sprint even exists anymore, so I guess those people were on to something.
The people with T-Mobile all seemed quite happy.
I took T-Mobile and have been pretty happy with it as well.
I was recently thinking of changing and asked my students at college what they suggest - figure if anybody would know, it would be a group of people who veritably live on their cell phones. There is a new service here called MetroPC that has a flat rate for calls/text/data and some were happy with it, but most admitted the minute they left the greater Las Vegas area, it wasn’t all that great.
There were still lots of fans of T-Mobile, so I decided to keep them.
That said, some students told me they got some great plans through T-Mobile that I was not aware of.
Sure enough, I called T-Mobile and, for the exact same price I was already paying, they had a much better plan available! (1000 base talk minutes on the Family Plan instead of the 700 I was getting!) I switched (at no cost) but was kind of pissed they never told me about this and I had to find out on my own.
- If you have a plan you like, call every once in awhile to see if they have a new plan that might be better for the same, or lower, price.
- Get a smart phone with internet - I am an old fogey, and trust me when I say I am glad I got my Samsung Galaxy 4S and have not looked back! There is a learning curve but once you get the hang of it, I cannot begin to tell you how glad you will be to have access to the internet when out and about! GPS included, maps, finding shops, checking movie times, weather, news, killing time when waiting in lines, etc.
- Nobody on this board can tell you which carrier is best in your particular neighborhood/area - so ask your neighbors/co-workers/people on the street and see who they suggest! Nobody knows better than the current local customers!
I got my first phone in 1999. Cingular was the carrier but they got bought off.
I am with AT&T right now which is who took over, and I am happy with their service thus far. I have never had a problem in that whole time.
Edit: those here with MetroPC can’t get connections a lot of the time. I never had this problem.
I got Verizon because (at the time at least) no other provider else got decent service in my apartment building, I got the cheapest plan possible (50 minutes, 250 text per month - I’ve gone over this once in 4 years), and I got a phone that came free with my plan. Easy-peasy. I’ve never lost or broken that first phone, I will replace it with another free phone if I do.
Some of the decision making was easy. We don’t have a plan. We are the third line on our son’s plan. Carrier fixed, plan fixed, all that left was choosing a fairly simple cheap phone that we could figure out how to make calls on.
So our son can see all the calls we make. he can tell we called our lawyer, but not if we are cutting him out of our will.
He and his wife never used all the minutes the lowest plan called for. Manyof our calls are free weekend ones or Sprint to Sprint ones to him or our daughter. It is nice having a strong family and trusting each other.
Not a bad option - one for anyone who is just getting a cell phone to consider.
For about six years, I had my sister and both my parents on a family plan from AT&T. My parents finally drifted off to other carriers when they wanted new phones and I didn’t have the ability to hook them up cheaply with anything they liked. My sister stuck with AT&T and found a phone there she was happy with, so she’s still on my plan.
Yes, I do have access to their list of phone calls. I do have access to see if they are buying things through their phone (ring tones, etc). But when I look at the bill, I just check if there’s anything expensive. If so, I’ll ask about it. If it’s within $10 or so of the normal bill, I ignore it.
Note that for my plan, at least, there is no requirement that the others live in the same house, or be dependents.
-D/a
When my (then-)wife and I got mobile phones, we anticipated using them for emergencies. We looked at the plans available from various carriers, and saw that only Cingular had a plan with minimal minutes at a low monthly cost. I use my mobile a lot more than I used to, but I still don’t use all the minutes on that plan, and can’t imagine using thousands of minutes in addition to the free in-network minutes. I did upgrade to unlimited data when I got a phone with a browser, and of course Cingular is now part of AT&T.
We selected flip-phones from the limited array of “free with contract” phones – phones with the few features we really wanted, and with a good reputation for sound quality. I still select phones that way, as I vastly prefer the flip form factor. I am willing to pay a small premium for certain things I value: since I keep my phone in my pocket, I prefer the thinnest phone I can get; I don’t really like phones that are very short; I like a big screen; I like predictive text on a dialer-style keyboard; above all, I will not buy a phone that doesn’t have an excellent reputation for good sound – I make phone calls on it, and I have to able to hear the calls. I’m mostly happy with my current phone, although it pisses me off that AT&T locked the GPS so I can’t use it with Google Maps. I’m working around it, though it’s inconvenient; I’m not paying them one extra dime to use their service.
I’ll probably never get a smart phone. I hate the open face designs, don’t like tiny QWERTY keyboards, and can already check Gmail and run Opera – I can’t see the point in paying more for the premium plan than only makes what I already do only slightly more convenient, and actually reduces sound quality. Every smart phone on the market seems to have great reviews for its features, reviews which always point out the sacrifice made in its performance as a phone.
Sprint allowed us to have a number with our home area code although our son whose plan we are on lives in a different state.
I have had two cellphones. In both cases, the main purpose for them was to keep in my car in case of an emergency, as I have a land line for my normal calling purposes, so I went with AT&T “prepaid” (i.e. pay-as-you-use, although now I pay a flat monthly fee) phones. The first one had only a few features besides dialing, mainly because smartphones were much more expensive back then, but my new one is an Android-based smartphone, mainly because (a) it only cost about $100, and (b) I could use an Android device to test apps that I develop (just as soon as I can get the latest version of Eclipse to work properly).
I chose the service provider first because there’s one in our area with clearly superior coverage and service. After that I chose the phone (latest smartphone), then the plan based on my expected usage.
You need to ask yourself the following questions:
How many minutes do you want to talk?
How many texts do you want to send?
Do you want a smart phone (touchscreen, runs apps)?
Do you want a mobile Internet (data plan)?
Well, I knew I needed coverage everywhere in the province, not just the main cities because of highway driving. So that ruled out one (Rogers) of the two providers that build their own towers.
Unfortunately, the remaining provider (Sasktel) didn’t carry the iPhone, which I wanted. So I bided my time, patiently, with my ancient cellphone that was already paid off and on a prepaid plan. Finally, Sasktel opened up its towers to other providers (Telus, Bell) - meaning they rented airtime, basically.
I picked up an iPhone from Telus the very day they started operating here. Now, my contract is nearly up and I want to go back to Sasktel for my new iPhone now that they have them, but there’s one part of my current Telus plan that Sasktel doesn’t offer and I’m not willing to give up. With Telus, I get unlimited calling to 5 numbers, any time of day and even if it’s long distance. I use those 5 numbers for my closest family and friends who live out of this city. But Sasktel doesn’t offer anything like that, it just offers free calls to other Sasktel cellphones, which doesn’t help since my parents are on a landline.
I really want to go back to Sasktel because I love the company and its ideals - I buy into the concept of Crown Corporations - but that one little hitch in the plan sucks.
This thread is over a year old.
Thudlow Boink, did you get a cell phone??
Yes, I actually got a phone on the family plan that my fiancee and her family had (which means a lot of the choices were made for me). It’s the kind with QWERTY buttons, and it works just fine for making calls, sending and receiving text messages, taking and sending pictures, etc., so I’m satisfied with it.
I’ve also gotten a Kindle Fire HD since originally starting this thread, which I can use for some of the app-y-type things that people use smartphones for.