I've been looking around for a way to lower my cell phone bill (currently on Verizon but my contract is over) and am thinking about using Consumer Cellular. However, the phones they have aren't the greatest. They have a "bring your own phone" thing, and I've noticed there are a lot of phones I've never heard of (ie, Asus Zenphone, Plum, OnePlus One, Oppo, etc). Are any of these worthwhile?
fwiw, I have a galaxy s3 right now.
considering they are on S6 or S5 now? your phone is -way- out of date
My brother just got the Asus and has nothing but good to say about it. I like it a lot more than my iPhone 5c.
Also check out ting. And let me know if you go for ting because I can get you a $50 credit if I refer you
Who are you with currently?
What are you spending per month now?
If price were not an issue, what cell carrier would you like to be with?
Answer those questions and then read this book I have written here: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/cell-phone-service/99706/page1/
I have a Oneplus One and it's a pretty high end phone and IMHO unbeatable in the price/performance stakes if you can live with a couple of idiosyncrasies. It's running almost pure Android and is a bit of a "hacker phone" the sense that it gives you a great canvas to customize your phone exactly like you want it to.
However mine is currently residing in a drawer because it didn't work too well for me in my rather Apple-biased infrastructure.
Good info, thanks guys! Not sure I care about it being out of date really, I mostly use it for phone/text/email, not apps. But the battery life is pretty poor now.
I'll check out ting, I hadn't heard of that one.
I'm with Verizon. My bill is ~75.00/month (down from $99 when I was paying off the phone). I like Verizon's network, just not the price, although I think AT&T would be pretty similar for most of where I go. There was a lot of good info in that thread, thanks! If I keep the phone I'll either go VZW prepaid or Straight Talk.
I might want to get an iPhone for exactly that same reason...
If you don't want to, you don't have to get a new phone. Your Samsung has an easily accessible/replaceable battery. I picked up a battery from Amazon for my gf's Note 2 last year. So far it's been great and fixed the dying battery issue.
and your battery will last longer if you unlock yours and get rid of all the bloat that comes with the contract
Removing the provider lock doesn't have anything to do with the ability to root a phone, though. Although for something like an S3, one should be able to also find a way to unlock the boot loader and then drop something like Cyanogenmod on the phone.
i forget which one it is, but one of the cheaper prepaid companies runs on the Verizon network and offers a really good unlimited plan for something like $40 a month... Boost Mobile, maybe??
Boost Mobile (and Virgin Mobile) are wholey owned by Sprint, not Verizon.
I was the one that started this thread: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/cell-phone-service/99706/page1/
Same situation: S3 on Verizon with no contract. I went to WalMart and bought a Straight Talk CDMA starter kit. The transfer was easy. I did put a new battery in mine. $45/mo for 5GB data and unlimited talk/text. Its hard to beat that for Verizon 4G service.
I have since rooted my phone and disabled all of the Verizon crap.
Make sure you understand the difference between CDMA and GSM phones.
I recently dropped T-mobile and switched to Cricket (both GSM). Cricket is now owned by AT&T and uses the same network, but data speeds are capped at 8mb on LTE (plenty fast for anything I do).
Pricing depends on how many lines you have. In our case it's $70/month (including taxes and fees) for unlimited talk/text and 2.5GB of data per line.
I picked up a $100 Moto X from Swappa.com for my wife (awesome phone for the money!) and am using my old Note for the time being. I am planning on getting a Oneplus One as soon as they start selling for ~$200 on swappa.
In reply to 2002maniac:
Those are down to $249 new from One plus one. Why are they still over over that on there?
Yeah, the CDMA vs GSM thing was why I was considering buying a new GSM phone. Seems like it would have more service options. Also, thanks for that link to swappa, that was another site I was unaware of.
I am on Tmobile and using GSM phones I pay $72 a month (government discount else it would $80 for 2 lines) for 2 lines with 1Gb of data each. Addition data is $5 per line.
Coverage isn't the best, but they are easy, cheap enough, and cover me 99% of the time
singleslammer wrote: In reply to 2002maniac: Those are down to $249 new from One plus one. Why are they still over over that on there?
$249 new is for a 16 GB phone. The 64 GB model is $300
Flight Service wrote: I am on Tmobile and using GSM phones I pay $72 a month (government discount else it would $80 for 2 lines)
plus taxes and fees, right? Nice thing about prepaid MVNO is the taxes and fees are included in pricing.
2002maniac wrote:Flight Service wrote: I am on Tmobile and using GSM phones I pay $72 a month (government discount else it would $80 for 2 lines)plus taxes and fees, right? Nice thing about prepaid MVNO is the taxes and fees are included in pricing.
my $50 a month T Mobile prepaid plan costs $53 and change a month once the MN sales tax is added on. used to be that they only charged that if i went to Wal Mart or wherever and bought a card, but now they do it online, too.. bastards..
MetroPCS with a Moto G here. $45 a month per line with 5GB of data each. The Moto G is $179 and performs as well as my iPhone 4s did.
http://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones/moto-g-2nd-gen/moto-g-2nd-gen.html
I love it. I tossed in a 16GB micro SD card to supplement the built-in 8 GB of storage. And it is unlocked, so you can take it anywhere that has a GSM network.
2002maniac wrote:Flight Service wrote: I am on Tmobile and using GSM phones I pay $72 a month (government discount else it would $80 for 2 lines)plus taxes and fees, right? Nice thing about prepaid MVNO is the taxes and fees are included in pricing.
I think the $80 is +++ just looked, My plan is $68 and after +++ it is $79.01. The only reason I didn't stick with an MVNO is that after a year with T-Mobile I get the discount on the new phone without having to contract and then make payments.
I'm making another switch! Its not because of anything wrong with Straight Talk, but because I got a Google Project Fi invite last night.
Its still a "beta" product, but I'm going for it. Its $20/mo for unlimited talk and text and then $10/GB. You get refunded for what you don't use, so if you only use 500MB, you get $5 back. That's where its cheap.
Its not cheap on the other end though, where you have to buy a Nexus 6 at full price, or financed.
The service itself uses a mix of Sprint, T-Mobile and wifi.
I should have the phone next week and will post how its working.
2002maniac wrote: Make sure you understand the difference between CDMA and GSM phones.
I don't. I could easily google it, but I just love being spoonfed by GRM folk.
In reply to asoduk:
Good luck on the Google Fi. Sounds interesting.
I have no experience with it and wonder about some of the challenges it could face.
If you need a place for cellular advise and experiences, ad nauseam, head over to the forums section of www.howardforums.com
sounds an aweful like Republic Wireless and given that the people who do RW are the same people who do Google Voice and they use the Motorola phone exclusively, it would make sense it is brand engineering.
For the record the only reason I don't do Republic Wireless is I like the iPhone and Sprint doesn't work for me.
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