Phone plan update

[rhu]

So I've had my new phone for a little over a month now. Some relevant statistics:

Out-of-pocket costs:
Phone: $150 at Amazon.com, no contract, no early-cancellation fees.
Service: $100/year, from which all other costs are deducted

Details of what gets deducted from that $100/year:
Talking: 10c/minute
SMS send/receive: 20c/SMS
Data plan: $5/mo for 10MB (or I can pay $15/mo for 100MB if I need do; unused MB roll over)

My usage in the first month:
2.8MB data
22 minutes

Unexpected charges:
* 75c/month "911 fee", deducted from my balance
* per-minute charges for call forwarding (I'm using Google Voice for voice mail; I included that in the 22 minutes above.)

At this rate, I should come in at just about that $100/year. I'm happy about that.

Comments

[ericberlin.livejournal.com]

What service is this?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

AT&T GoPhone, with the LG Thrive from Amazon. It's an adequate phone, but as you can see from my usage numbers, I really can't justify spending more than this.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

i am a heavy smartphone (iphone) user, but I'm finding this an interesting proposition to try out Android. I was pretty much set on switching to Android when the HTC Lead and Holiday come out, but iOS 5 is calling me back... hmmm.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

FWIW, the phone worked fine as a wifi-only Android PDA before I activated the SIM card. So if you just want to play with an Android device, you can buy the Thrive from Amazon and just not activate it.

The only caveat there is that you get what you pay for --- it's Android 2.2 but the CPU isn't powerful enough to run, say, Flash. And the screen is a little small for a PDA. As I said above, it's an adequate phone, but I don't love it.

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

So it's fairly straightforward in Android to switch off the 3G data connection and force it to use WiFi? As a fellow low-budget prepaid user (though I currently use T-Mobile rather than AT&T) that's been one of my concerns when I consider getting a smartphone.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

There's a big "3G" toggle button on the second homepage.

[sethg]

My impression, using both the Nokia N900 (Maemo) and the N8 (Symbian), is that if there was a WiFi network available to which the phones had been properly introduced, then they would use that network instead of the cellular network for data transmissions.

I assume that iOS and Android have similar capabilities.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

That doesn't address two aspects: (1) Between when I leave the wifi island of my house and arrive 30 minutes later at the wifi island of my office, I do not need and cannot use and do not want to pay for 3G data usage of my phone polling for email updates. (2) There are wifi dead spots in my home (and office, and shul, etc.) so even if I think I'm on wifi and it's free to stream video, if my phone loses the wifi connection I'll be sucked dry if it switches to 3G instead.

So I'm pleased that my phone has a nice easy to find button to turn off the 3G data link completely.