Posted: 12/13/2009 11:22:15 PM EDT
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Hello again, ARFCOM,
Having recently discovered the utility of texting (I used to be a big technology nerd, but I've been slacking off for the past... three or four years or so), and the fact that my phone co. charges me $0.20/text sent or received (have no fear, I thought to check this after having only had six or seven text exchanges), I would like to A) get a new phone because my current one is absolute garbage vis a vis texting, and is big and clunky and stupid, and B) switch to a new plan or provider which will best suit my needs. I'm a college student, so I'm still on my family's plan (two lines, me and my mom), so I'm shopping on behalf of my dad for a plan for both my mother and myself. Our current cell minute usage/month is around 250 minutes/month combined (my mom mostly only talks to her sister, and I don't have any friends, lol), so a huge number of minutes isn't a big priority. So here's what I'm looking for in a provider and a plan: 1. Keep our numbers (We're on Sprint/Nextel right now) 2. No roaming, no long distance, none of that weird nonsense 3. Number of anytime-type minutes is sort of up in the air (some of the providers I've looked at have special features if you get more than X minutes, etc.), but we probably won't have need of more than 500-700 or so. 4. Texting is important, I'm looking for an unlimited text plan that includes IM and such 5. Data is not important to me. If it's on a plan of the same price anyway, so much the better, but I'm not looking for it. Phone points of performance: Mom's phone 1. Long battery life. Loooooong battery life. Loooo–– you get the idea. My mom forgets to plug her phone in every so often, so something that'll go two or three days or more without attention would be ideal. 2. Other features (size, keyboards, cameras, swiss army antennae) largely unimportant, as my mom mostly keeps her cell in her purse. My phone: this is really the meat and potatoes of what I'm asking about here because I don't know squat about cell phones. I kind of want to get a smartphone type phone, but I'm not looking to drop like 5 C-bills on a cell, you know what I mean? My only requirements in a phone are: 1. Sensible battery life 2. Qwerty Keyboard 3. (If it's a smart phone only) Wi-Fi. I'm not opposed to buying a phone on my own, and either getting a cheapo phone with the plan and just popping its SIM out, or just getting a SIM from the company and putting it in my own phone. As it stands, I am sort of vacillating between T-Mobile and Verizon. The former seems to have the most straightforward plans and the lowest prices, but I don't know about their phones. Verizon is somewhat more expensive on the plan front, and somewhat more complex, and I haven't yet looked at their phone selection. I dunno exactly what I'm looking for here from you guys, as this post has ended up sort of all over the place. If nothing else, I guess I'm just looking for what people who know cellphones love or hate, or if nothing more complicated than "Hey, I use this, and I got this plan, and this is what it cost, and this is why I like it or want to put it in a sock and kill a guy with it." Thanks in advance, guys. |
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Well I read a bunch more stuff, and I think I have a somewhat more... coherent view of cell phones and plans and such.
Now I'm looking at Sprint. Does anyone know how well their data/web stuff works? I'm looking at two of their phones pretty hard right now. They're both Android phones, the Samsung Moment, and the HTC Hero. The Moment has gotten pretty okay reviews, but the reviews I do find usually talk about the negative things being that it's "boring" and doesn't include a lot of built in flashy horseshit, which makes it sound perfect for my boring ass.  But that said, how good is the Android App Market? I mean what kind of functionality are we talking about with these apps?
Does anyone have experience with physical keyboards vs. onscreen ones? I am suspicious of onscreen keyboards (I've used the one that's on my tablet-notebook and it is irritating as hell), but I've heard that the Moment's keyboard is kind of shitty. Are they just like little playthings and widgets like for just whatever goofy crap, or is it really like having access to real open source software that can do useful stuff? How much of the built-in crap will I be able to take off the Moment or the Hero? I mean is Android like Linux, where if I wanted to I could just replace all the little subprograms which do its various tasks, or am I sort of stuck with whatever basic fiddling Samsung did to android? A couple reviews I read said that Android can get bogged down and start to get sluggish because it "doesn't end programs", and that for this reason it's a good idea to have a task manager program. Can anyone bear this out? Also, I know that Android 2.0 is out, with the introduction of the Motorola Droid. The Moment and the Hero run Android 1.5. Is it ever going to be possible to upgrade, or update? How are software/firmware updates handled on cellphones anyway? |
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Okay so here I am replying to my own thread again.
I went to the Sprint Store down the road today, and talked to some guys in black Polo shirts who had nasty things to say about the competition and nice things to say about Sprint. Who would have thunk it? But anyway one guy let me fondle his Moment, and there was a Hero there that got groped, too, and I decided that while multitouch is quite sexy, the hero's pretend keyboard was sketchy and irritating and that I would much prefer the moment's more tangible style. They talked about plans a bunch, but their dodging of the issue of FEES made me nervous and sweaty. The tiny print in the back of the plan book mentions a bunch of sketchball fees that Sprint can tack on when they feel like it, like the Regulatory Fee (which is immediately followed by a statement that there is no regulatory agency which requires this fee, which means that they must have not liked the fee's original name of the "Fuck You" Fee), and the Administrative Fee, and the upside down and backwards fee, and the blue fee, and so on. Does anyone know if these are per-account fees, or per-line fees, or per-plan fees or what? My mom doesn't need text or data on her phone, so instead of getting the Family Data plan ($130/mo for two lines, plus the Pretty Pretty Princess Fees), we were considering purchasing 1 Talk plan ($40/mo, plus Hurfa Durfa Weeee) and 1 Data plan ($70/mo, plus Urrrrrrrrrrrrr). But the above mentioned fees thing makes me suspect that the $20 difference in these plans might be overridden by weird fees and suspicious nonsense. Speaking of suspicious nonsense, the guys at the sprint store claimed that a Data plan purchased without a phone (with the phone purchased directly) would be no different from the same plan purchased with a phone (for a $200 savings on the phone, in exchange for a 2-year contract). I find this deeply suspicious. Can anyone comment on doing the contract-thing with Sprint? tl;dr: how bad are sprint's added-on fees? Will sprint waive any of them if I get on the phone with them? Are the fees multiplied over separate plans on the same account? What is the deal with sprint's gettin'-a-phone-on-a-contract? |
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Arfcommers?! In MY thread? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE >8u Also thanks~ 
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OKAY SO, I thought I'd update this thread just to conclude it and thank NorWester for the link to the SUF.
I decided to stick with Sprint. I called their retentions department (with some info from the sprintusers), and told them I needed a little incentive to stick with Sprint for another 24 months. They got me on a better plan with a $20/mo recurring credit. Legit. I decided on a Samsung Moment for my new phone. I've been noodling with it a bunch over the last few days, and reading the AndroidForums and the Samsung Moment Forum a bunch. It has some irritating deficiencies (stock software is irritating and un-uninstallable without rooting the phone, bad battery meter, mediocre battery life) but it's stuff that's fixable either with a custom ROM or Samsung getting its act together and updating the Moment (they say a firmware update is forthcoming... sometime in the next six months.). So anyway! Thanks NorWester! |