[ale] Moving my Wife/Kids phones into the 20th Century

[Greg Clifton]

JD,

Wait, you have a cell plan that costs $2.50 per MONTH?????? Or was that a
typo?

I switched from Verizon to T Mobile a little over a year ago because of
their required $30/month" data plan, but I'm paying WAY more than that on
my G S2 phone.

If the question was regarding running up high costs with a data plan, I
would suggest Straight Talk (aka Track Phone via Walmart). They used to
have "unlimited" plans for like $45/month and you can bring your own phone,
provided it is a TMobile, at least. If your concern was more on the order
of keeping them off the web for other reasons, I'm no help there.

Also, if you have an old Verizon phone, you can go with PagePlus with
Verizon coverage and various sized buckets of features from like
$20-$40/month. I have 2 kids doing that now and very happy with them, other
than the "customer no service" as Clark Howard likes to call it.


On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 2:36 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> On 04/22/2013 11:01 AM, Neal Rhodes wrote:
> > Sorry if this is turning into
> > alt.gripe.about.phones.just.because.android.resembles.linux, but...
> >
> > Does anyone know of a carrier that will sell an android smartphone
> WITHOUT a
> > data plan?
> >
> > Meaning, it works like a phone to call and text, and when in WIFI
> coverage, it
> > will do the groovy smartphone things.
> >
> > I've got three people here that are customers.
>
>
> Don't buy a carrier phone. Buy an unlocked phone to start, then buy the
> plan you
> want from the carrier YOU want.  I've been on the same t-mobile plan
> (pay-as-i-go) for 6+ yrs. Bought a new microSIM ($1), migrated the old
> plan to
> the microSIM for free, and haven't looked back.
>
> I saw a slickdeal yesterday for a Galaxy III for $240-ish - unlocked.
>
> The key is to be on a world-standard phone - that means GSM. In the USA,
> that
> means either AT&T or T-mobile or someone that resells from those 2 major
> providers.  Since you (and I) don't care about data, we don't care if LTE2
> or 4G
> is available on the data plan. It doesn't matter.
>
> My cell phone plan costs under $2.50/month, so I figure if I use $100 in a
> month, I've still come out 2000x cheaper than monthly plans.  Actually,
> I've
> added $10 to the plan every year for the last 5 yrs to keep it alive. The
> first
> year had lots of up-front costs, but those have clearly been recouped.
>
> Like I've previously stated, I have a Nexus 4 (16G model ~ about $360) -
> comes
> unlocked directly from Google. I miss
> * swapping batteries
> * microSD slot
> but besides those items, love the quad-core phone, fast GPS locks, and
> many apps
> that work disconnected just fine.
>
> Also, disabling a cellular data connection is trivial in Android.  Once it
> is
> disabled, it stays disabled regardless of "airplane mode" use or not. When
> I
> leave the country, I do pull the SIM to prevent any accidental voice
> roaming
> charges, but that's just a good idea for anyone with any phone.  GPS works
> fine
> without a SIM, BTW.  At least it does on Android.  I've been in remote
> places
> where people with iPhones discover that GPS doesn't seem to work. It has
> been a
> few yrs, so perhaps Apple has fixed that major flaw, but I dunno.
>
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