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Best cheapie cell phone deal ?
- Thread starter lotust
- Start date
Thegonagle
Diamond Member
T-Mobile and Verizon tend to have the best customer service. (They're both foreign-owned to one extent or another--go figure.)
So what drives you nuts about Nextel?
Roaming? (Or lack thereof?) Go with Verizon or Cingular.
Customer Service? Go with Verizon or T-mobile.
Signal quality? You'll probably need to try a few options, but I'd look first to Verizon.
Price? Well, for your usage, anybody's $40 plan would be sufficient, but you definitely get the most minutes per dollar with T-Mobile.
Lack of cool phones to choose from? Go with Cingular or T-Mobile for their GSM phone selections. (GSM is the most widely used digital technology in the world, so they can offer the widest range of choices. You can also choose from a wide variety of carrier-unlocked phones on the second-hand market and using one is a simple matter of swapping your carrier's GSM SIM card into the unlocked phone.)
Right now Sprint has a deal for a $50 camera/video flip phone, the Samsung A680. As for the plan, get the Fair & Flexible plan. You pay for what you use, so you don't have to pick a plan. Look at the prices for yourself, they're good. Overage is like $.05/minute.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
sciencewhiz
Diamond Member
Neither do you until you prove otherwise.
imported_waldo
Golden Member
Just go to Amazon.com....they have amazing cell phone deals!!
Thegonagle
Diamond Member
What the hell are you talking about? What's your point? I'm listening.
Thegonagle
Diamond Member
By roaming, I meant the ability to take your phone out of town and have it work for you. Technically speaking, you are roaming whenever you leave the home coverage area, which is defined by a unique SID (System ID) number assigned to a specific carrier in a limited geographical area.
Verizon and Cingualr acheive their roaming coverage not only through their "native" coverage (company owned networks in different cities) but also through roaming agreements with third party carriers, where the third party agrees to carry a Verizon or Cingular customer's calls over their network when said customer is out of range from their carrier's own network. In Verizon and Cingular's case, such roaming is not only widely available, it's usually free for the customer, too.
With Nextel, you can roam to different cities where Nextel offers service, but Nextel uses their own unique form of digital technology, so it's Nextel or nothing--there are no alternative networks, so there's no roaming off the Nextel network.
With Sprint, you can also roam to different cities where Sprint offers service, generally at no extra charge. Sprint also has third-party roaming agreements in place; however, they charge the customer either by the minute, or by the month, to take advantage of these agreements, which is not ideal for the customer.
With T-Mobile, like the others, you can roam to different cities where T-Mobile offers service; however, if I'm reading their maps correctly, they don't allow the customer to take wide advantage of third-party roaming agreements, so basically, it's T-Mobile or nothing. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this on plans they currently offer.)
Therefore, if you want the ability to use your phone at no extra charge in areas that the carrier doesn't offer their own service, the advantage lies with Cingular and Verizon. (And especially Verizon if you're serious about having coverage everywhere possible, because they offer digital/analog handsets that work in the few areas left where there is non-digital service available. Analog, AKA AMPS ("Advanced" Mobile Phone Service), was developed in the seventies, standardized in the early eighties, widely deployed through the eighties and nineties, and is still the one and only "universal" cellular language in the US.)
zephyrprime
Diamond Member
Thegonagle's pretty spot on in my opionion. There's always a large degree of personal opinion in this sort of rating but my own experience agrees well with Thegonagle's.
I DID prove otherwise in my post above, but I'll be clearer:
- T-Mobile and Nextel are rated the best for cutomer service. Verizon is rated high for network satisfaction, but it's not in the same tier as the other two. T-Mobile will totally give away phones if you want a new one, which is something I haven't seen ANYONE else in the industry do. In other words, if you don't like your service or your phone, call in and b1tch and they'll give you a new one. Thus, they have high ratings.
- I agree with all the other points, except for the last one (and it annoys me because SO MANY ignorant people say this that don't know what they're talking about). GSM isn't beating CDMA by SO MUCH that the phone offers are in another world. In the US, the CDMA carriers were the first to offer camera and video phones. GSM beat CDMA to bluetooth and has more of a variety there. What Thegonagle and the rest of you fail to realize is that JAPAN AND KOREA - two countries that are constantly at the height of new technologies - are ENTIRELY CDMA. Thus, they drive a lot of its development. If you don't believe that, take a good look at the phones offered by US carriers. Sprint has the best selection, and is really in a class by itself there (except for that new RAZR, which kicks a$$, but it's only one phone, and it doesn't have many of the features I use in my phone right now).
Depends where you live. In Boston, Verizon and Tmobile have the best consistant service from my personal use. Cingular/ATT isnt very great, but useable. Sprint is unuseable - you lose service in too many block areas of Boston.
Tmobile and CingularATT have the fact that you can import a phone from SE asia and slip your sim card in and go. For this, I like Tmobile - on top of the fact that I get great service, and price per minutes ratio is pretty good if not the best.
Tmobile and CingularATT have the fact that you can import a phone from SE asia and slip your sim card in and go. For this, I like Tmobile - on top of the fact that I get great service, and price per minutes ratio is pretty good if not the best.
Pliablemoose
Lifer
Heh, the best cheapie deal is to buy the most expensive phone free after rebate from Amazon, and sell it on eBay, put the sim card in a cheap phone...
As far as T-Mobile's roaming, we took a trip this summer & every large town we were in had some kind of service, sometime's it'd show up as an odd carrier, but we had coverage.
I'll also second T-Mobile's customer service, I'm very happy with them, we're got a family plan & they've solved every problem promptly & usually in my favor. They just ate a $20 charge on a line I had rolled over into a family plan.
As far as T-Mobile's roaming, we took a trip this summer & every large town we were in had some kind of service, sometime's it'd show up as an odd carrier, but we had coverage.
I'll also second T-Mobile's customer service, I'm very happy with them, we're got a family plan & they've solved every problem promptly & usually in my favor. They just ate a $20 charge on a line I had rolled over into a family plan.
bamacre
Lifer
I went into Best Buy to get a cell phone once, I knew what they had as far as the phone and deal, so I knew what I wanted. When I got up to the counter, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw what appeared to be a little plastic baggie with something green inside. Knowing I was in a retail store, I knew I had to make a fast decision here.
I walked out of the store with a free Motorola t720, great deal on minutes, and 1/8 of an oz of kind bud. Nice.
I walked out of the store with a free Motorola t720, great deal on minutes, and 1/8 of an oz of kind bud. Nice.
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