Prepaid smartphones

[ponyo]

I don't need LTE. I'm on T-Mobile and after the 4.0.4 OTA update on my G Nex with the new radio, I'm pulling 8-9 down/ and 2-3 up. Before on 4.0.2 with the old radio, I was pulling 2-4 down/ and <1 up. You can see from my screen shot when I updated to 4.0.4 on March 31. Speed pretty much doubled for me with the new radio.

G Nex has 21 Mbps HSDPA radio. My friend who has T-Mobile SGS2 with the 42 Mbps HSDPA+ radio gets ~15 Mbps down/ 1-2 Mbps up. While it's not the crazy fast LTE speed, I rather take the extra battery life of 3G over the extra d/u speed of 4G LTE.

 

[lothar]

That was a typo on my behalf. I was refering to the nexus. I had been semi tempted to keep /w Sprint a little bit longer since I've heard from someone (a dev on XDA) that LTE is actually live in my area... but I can't see keep paying these crazy prices & upgrade fees. And really... who needs LTE? I am cool /w 3-5MB/sec download... if it's big files I will be on wifi anyways.

When does your contract with Sprint expire? How much are you paying per month both before and after taxes? Are you on an individual or a family plan?

Sprint said they plan to release 15 LTE capable handsets this year. That is very aggressive if true.
Not sure what to do in your scenario...If contract will expire soon(meaning within the next 6-8 months), I would consider waiting(depending on what your current monthly bill is of course) so I won't have to pay any ETF. If contract expires next year, just break it now, pay the ETF, and sell the phone. You will realize the Straight Talk cost savings the earlier you break your contract. The longer you keep waiting, the less value you will realize. You also don't want to break it early if your contract would be expiring soon and you can watch Sprint's LTE rollout in action on the side lines to see how fast it performs and where while waiting for your contract to expire this year.

If their LTE rollout would be the same as their WiMax rollout, break the contract ASAP now and pay the ETF. You can always go back to Sprint anytime you want.

 

[lothar]

If they cancel you, who cares? Wait, WHAT? You just recommended paying $430 for a Pentaband GSM phone for prepaid, then two months later they cancel you and you say, who cares?

Do you like throwing your money away? Because then you are right back to AT&T or Verizon? I have to say, some of you people really sound like total tech snobs. I have an Optimus V on Virgin, and it's not the best, but I'm satisfied overall. I don't really have anything to complain about. Calling a phone that can run ICS a "crap" phone is pretty silly, imo.

I guess if you need all your Youtube videos in 1080p, then you will be bending over for AT&T. Because yes, they will rape you.

OP, the Triumph is an ok phone. But personally, I would wait for an Evo One.

What money would he be throwing away? A Galaxy Nexus is fully compatible with AT&T's 4G network. He can sign a contract with AT&T to buy the latest iPhone for $200 and sell it for $450-500.

Yeah, all the people in Europe and Australia that switch among GSM providers are total tech snobs. 🙄

 

[ponyo]

If they cancel you, who cares? Wait, WHAT? You just recommended paying $430 for a Pentaband GSM phone for prepaid, then two months later they cancel you and you say, who cares?

Do you like throwing your money away? Because then you are right back to AT&T or Verizon? I have to say, some of you people really sound like total tech snobs. I have an Optimus V on Virgin, and it's not the best, but I'm satisfied overall. I don't really have anything to complain about. Calling a phone that can run ICS a "crap" phone is pretty silly, imo.

I guess if you need all your Youtube videos in 1080p, then you will be bending over for AT&T. Because yes, they will rape you.

OP, the Triumph is an ok phone. But personally, I would wait for an Evo One.

They won't cancel you unless you routinely go over 2gb. OP doesn't even use 1gb. I already know exactly how much I use since ICS has built in data use monitor. I won't have a problem with 2gb. Even if my service was somehow canceled, I can sign up with T-Mobile $30 100 minutes 5GB prepaid plan or any of these prepaid plans.

I paid way more than $430 for my G Nex. And since I use it everyday, I don't regret the purchase at all. In the big picture, the cost of the phone is peanuts and I rather use a phone I liked than live with shitty phone everyday I was unhappy with. You couldn't pay me to use a crap phone like Optimus V. I rather use a dumb phone and save even more money rather than deal with the frustration and slowness of phone like Optimus V. It's like asking Intel i7 2600 users to go back using Pentium 2 or something like that. Once you've tasted steak, it's hard to go back to eating just beans.

 

[Mxster]

What money would he be throwing away? A Galaxy Nexus is fully compatible with AT&T's 4G network. He can sign a contract with AT&T to buy the latest iPhone for $200 and sell it for $450-500.

Yeah, all the people in Europe and Australia that switch among GSM providers are total tech snobs. 🙄

Because then you are recommending he goes back to AT&T, which is exactly why people switch to prepaid in the first place?

They won't cancel you unless you routinely go over 2gb. OP doesn't even use 1gb. I already know exactly how much I use since ICS has built in data use monitor. I won't have a problem with 2gb. Even if my service was somehow canceled, I can sign up with T-Mobile $30 100 minutes 5GB prepaid plan or any of these prepaid plans.

I paid way more than $430 for my G Nex. And since I use it everyday, I don't regret the purchase at all. In the big picture, the cost of the phone is peanuts and I rather use a phone I liked than live with shitty phone everyday I was unhappy with. You couldn't pay me to use a crap phone like Optimus V. I rather use a dumb phone and save even more money rather than deal with the frustration and slowness of phone like Optimus V. It's like asking Intel i7 2600 users to go back using Pentium 2 or something like that. Once you've tasted steak, it's hard to go back to eating just beans.

 

[Mxster]

To Ponyo: what exactly about the Optimus V qualifies it as a crap phone, compared to the GNex? Are you strictly referring to the display, or are you talking about processing power? If your GNex is multicore, you realize most apps aren't optimized for multiple threads?

 

[RavenSEAL]

To Ponyo: what exactly about the Optimus V qualifies it as a crap phone, compared to the GNex? Are you strictly referring to the display, or are you talking about processing power? If your GNex is multicore, you realize most apps aren't optimized for multiple threads?

Being a person that has gone through 4 Android Phones(V, mt4g, GS2, GNex) in the past 5 months. The Optimus V certainly a solid phone, it just doesn't have the qualities to compete with the Gnex, S2, etc.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Okay, I still haven't decided what exactly I'm going to do, but I still think it's down to either the $30 T-Mobile plan or the $45 Straight Talk plan (with AT&T). If I go T-Mo then my wife with either go to ST or maybe she'll keep her Sprint plan in order to make sure at least one of us has data coverage when we visit her parents. It's only a few times a year and I rarely need to use my data when I'm out there, plus they have wifi at home, so it seems like a bad idea for me to spend a whole lot extra for something I'll rarely use. Which phone I get is still up in the air; the Galaxy Nexus looks awesome but any T-Mobile 4G capable phone would probably be good for me.

I had another question though. Lothar and maybe some others advised me to port my number to Google Voice. One reason being that it's a "safe harbor" of sorts; as long as GV has my number, no prepaid carrier can get rid of it, either on purpose or by accident, and I only have to deal with porting once (when I port my existing number into GV). The question is, though, is it possible for me to set up Google Voice so I can receive calls if people call my GV number even without data access? I can deal with not having data access in certain rural areas as long as I can still make and receive calls. I really don't understand how GV works though. I'm afraid that if I'm without data access, then the only way I can get calls would be for people to call whatever number is associated with the sim card in the phone. But maybe GV can automatically forward calls to that number? I just don't know.

 

[soccerballtux]

when people call google voice it calls your number.
I personally had issues with getting everything set up perfect....sometimes the phone voicemail would pick up, sometimes the GV voicemail would pickup...confusing for me, confusing for users...

In addition, when you call people, you're going to have to use an app to call them to make your GV number show up on their Caller ID...in short I don't think it's worth the effort. I just stay under 100-130MB/day, and 2GB/month and rest easy.

 

[lothar]

when people call google voice it calls your number.
I personally had issues with getting everything set up perfect....sometimes the phone voicemail would pick up, sometimes the GV voicemail would pickup...confusing for me, confusing for users...

In addition, when you call people, you're going to have to use an app to call them to make your GV number show up on their Caller ID...in short I don't think it's worth the effort. I just stay under 100-130MB/day, and 2GB/month and rest easy.

I've never had that issue. I don't even know what my phone's voicemail feature is like. Never used it, never heard of it.


That is absolutely false.
You can set Google Voice to default on all calls.

Stop spreading FUD. There's no need for any additional app.
My Google Voice number shows up on all caller ID's.

I also use Google Voice for my voicemail exclusively. Their transcribe feature is great(as long as the person speaks English which we rarely do) and a copy of all SMS/Voicemail is archived in my gmail inbox. I don't waste time backing SMS like people do when flashing ROMS because all of that is already automatically archived in my Gmail label folder called "SMS/Voicemail".
Just open the app, click the play button and that's it. No need to punch any password, dial any numbers, or do the "dial+2 second pause+dial+2 second pause+dial" strategy that a lot of people setup and add to their contacts to listen to your voicemail.