Cell phones

[lesliepear]

What do people know about cell phones?

Mark lost the second cell phone on our t-mobile plan yesterday. He doesn't use it that much, so he thinks it might be easier for me to keep my unlimited phone with t-mobile, and have him go to a pre-paid phone for emergencies. (His plan ends in November). My MIL has Trackphone and likes it. I've got no clue which pay as you is best - I'd just prefer if Mark had a Nokia phone since all Nokia phones have the same chargers.

My phone is a Nokia. I'm thinking of upgrading on eBay as it's old and doesn't charge well. Any recommendations for that. (Mine is the 3390, Mark had a 6something with a color screen and a zillion functions).

Comments

[dstroy.livejournal.com]

the prepaid phones are the cheapest and best deal - virgin or tmobile to go plans work great, both offer nokias as phones - cheapest ones actually - I have tmobile - just read the fine print - the prepaid cards from target for 1000 minutes (100 bucks) dont expire for a whole year. Other places the minutes expire after like a month.

[lunameow.livejournal.com]

Unless something's changed in the past week, Virgin doesn't have Nokia phones. They have Audiovox and Kyocera. They've also got different calling plans now, too. You can pay per minute (.25 for the first 10, .10 after that), per day (.35 for the day, whether you use it or not, .10 for each call), or month (29.99 for 150 anytime, 500 night and weekend, with the option to add more for $10 when you use that up). I have them, and I like them... but make sure you check your coverage area, as I can't pick up a signal inside my apartment for anything.

[dstroy.livejournal.com]

Floyd got the virgin pre-paid like 2 months ago, and the cheapest phone that came with that plan - it's the Nokia with a color screen.

He got it cheap through online purchase.

As seen here.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

That one looks neat. I wanted to thank you for the 1000 minute information from t-mobile - we may go with that with the Target sale this week. It doesn't hurt that I have a 50.00 gift card there!

[lunameow.livejournal.com]

Ah, right. Forgot they brought the Shorty in a couple of months ago. Not a color screen, though, unless he just got lucky and they sent him the wrong one: "The phone features a candy bar design with a 96 x 65 monochrome display and an internal antenna."

Personally, I dig my Vox 8610, even though the battery didn't last very long (of course, can't fault Virgin for that, it was likely sitting for too long or something). My standby time is less than a day, without using the phone. No big deal, though. I wanted a nifty, gaudy, flashing battery anyway. ;)

[ginky.livejournal.com]

I had Verizon and really liked it. As long as I paid the bill I kept my left over minutes.

[waning-estrogen.livejournal.com]

I've been really satisfied with tracfone. I bought a nokia 1100 for the roadtrip and had connectivity almost constantly across the country. lost a little going through the mountains in tennessee, and would lose it for brief periods through wyoming (actually, I think it was just searching for the next tower). I love nokia's reliability and toughness (lots of oopsie-drops).

the new family plan we're getting is from cingular, and so I'm giving up the nokia tracfone. I'm getting a sony ericsson z500, so we can all share pictures and video. I hope it's up to the standards nokia has me expecting in a cellphone.

[luvmom.livejournal.com]

A friend did an extensive check as to which pay as you go phone plan was the best for her. She found virgin to be the cheapest.

A prepaid cell phone is only a good deal if you don't use it often.
If your going to be using it on a daily basis or making longer calls on it then you'd want to go with a monthly plan or you'll end up paying more in the long run with the pre-paid kind.

Also a lot of the pre-paid plans don't have great coverage and you have a lot of dead areas.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

Mark uses it to call me when he's late or he chats with friends in the car. We don't even come close to using up our 400 minutes a month anway - so I think prepaid for him (if we get the 1000 minutes for a year) will do fine. I'll keep mine as a single line plan then.

[dstroy.livejournal.com]

that has nothing to do with prepaid. Its the network not the cell plan that determines coverage. it's not like the tmobile phone searches for a tower with a special signal "only use some of our coverage because this is a cheap pre-paid user" ;)

[luvmom.livejournal.com]

It is the network and most times the companies that offer these pre-paid plans like virgin have less coverage areas. Which was my point.

Has nothing to do with only pre-paid. I meant it as companies that only offer pre-paid have less coverage so you need to take that in to account before subscribing to them and thinking you will make out by paying less. The coverage area has to do with the company and how many cell phone towers they have access to across the area.

Bigger companies like cingular, t-mobile, sprint etc have more coverage.

Each plan Does use it's own towers, otherwise all companies would offer you the same coverage and there would be no difference signal wise. So yes they do search for the signals from their own towers.

Where I live cingular has poor coverage and has tons of black out areas. However verizon and t-mobile work fine.

If you go with a bigger company's pre-paid plan like verizon you would have the same coverage as the month to month user.
BUT not all of them are the same which was why I gave the warning.

[dstroy.livejournal.com]

ah ok. I have tmobile prepaid and havent had any coverage issues- except last week in the middle of a state park out in the middle of nowhere, where, ironically, my husband's prepaid virgin cell had service. I had better coverage out on the beach than he did though. So it just varies. ATT or whatever they are called now...Cingular? has the best coverage in terms of number of towers across the US, but they are expensive and as far as I know, they dont have prepaid...but that could be incorrect. I just know when we were researching switching from our previous plans to prepaid they didnt come up as reasonable alternatives.

[lunameow.livejournal.com]

Actually, Virgin uses Sprint for coverage, which is one of the reasons why they don't have much of it. Sprint is big on digital, but no analog, which means you won't get much of a signal if you're too far from a city. The pay-as-you-go companies very, VERY rarely have their own towers, they have contracts with larger companies to provide the service. Virgin uses Sprint, Tracfone uses Cingular, etc.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm on month to month with t-mobile now, I'll see if they can do anything for me as far as a deal goes. I'd be willing to switch carriers for myself, but would like to keep the cell phone # I have.

[luvmom.livejournal.com]

Check out the deals on amazon.com
you can search it by plan and phones.
You don't have to purchase from them but it's an easy way to compare offers and phones. (I have purchaced through them and it was fine - but I now prefer going to the cell phone store directly)

Years ago I was with t-mobile. No complaints about them. My contract expired and I needed a new phone. The one I had was a cheapy and was falling apart. T-mobile didn't want to give me a deal on the phone I wanted.. Only offered me deals on the cheaper phones so,
I went with verizon. Since they did give me the deal on the phone I liked.

My contract with verizon is up soon.
I've been checking out the razr phone. Very cute. I'll have to see what verzion will give me to stay. I'd like more minutes, not to concered about the phone since the one I have right now is a good one.

Also if you decide to switch companies, go to the new company and have them port your phone number before cancelling the old company.. This way you can keep your number.

[lunameow.livejournal.com]

I have Virgin Mobile, and I love it. Unlike other strictly-prepaid companies, they give you different choices for plans, and you can change anytime you want. For example, I started on a per-minute basis (since that's all there was), then moved to a per day when they introduced it because I found I was using my phone a lot more than I expected. When they introduced month-to-month, I jumped on it immediately. If I get to a point where I'm not using my phone much, I can drop right back to one of the other plans just by going to the website or making a quick phone call. Their customer service is fantastic (which is already far more than Cingular can claim), and depending on how much you use your phone, they're easily one of the cheapest (way cheaper than tracfone, who I used to use). And, yup, you can port your number to them, as well. ;)

There's also a new company called U.S. Cellular that looks pretty good, but the last time I checked into them, they couldn't port numbers in. I'm not giving up the cellphone number that I've had for four years just for a new company. :P