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Message started by Oldfeller on 12/23/14 at 09:56:28

Title: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/23/14 at 09:56:28

The $180 smart phone

http://techfruit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-smartphones.jpg

Since things are getting cheaper all the time, sometimes you just gotta go for it instead of waiting around forever.

This April, I drop off of my current Verizon family plan and I have told my family I am not buying another $600 cell phone from a carrier.

(yep, multiply your plan's phone allotment by 24 months and your phone costs you at least $600)

To get a $180 smart phone this leaves me two paths to explore, buying a BRING YOUR OWN PHONE that will match up with a T-Mobile family plan or else jump ship completely and go with a Republic Wireless set up.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by youzguyz on 12/23/14 at 16:39:00

I have simple needs and had a "stupid phone", but I needed email access to 3 different accounts while I was away from the office while my wife was ill.
I got a Cricket account, and ZTE Grand X phone.
$99 phone (after $50 rebate), and $35 month (1gb data). Works OK for me.
But, you are the electro toy guru, so, I figure you already have all the 1 and 0's lined up!

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Art Webb on 12/23/14 at 18:53:08

I have Straight Talk, you have to pay for the phone up front, but you can bring your own phone, $45 a month unlimited talk, text, and data, only 3 g but it's as fast online as my PC most of the time

Also, Verizon towers, so better reception than any other carrier in my area

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/23/14 at 19:03:19

Your plans are way too expensive for me ..... I am thinking $25 or less a month and a phone that won't cost more than $180.

Republic Wireless sets this benchmark for me -- a Moto G with 16 gigs cost $179 and a wifi/3G mixed plan costs $25 a month, but during normal stay at home weeks I can cut it back down to only $10 a month.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Art Webb on 12/23/14 at 19:25:04

I'd bet a hat your phone will have no signal in my place of work, if it has it in my town at all
ATT, T mobile, Sprint, none of them work in my store, so I doubt a new startup will, either, though I could be wrong
a 25 dollar service plan that doesn't work when I need it ti is of no value to me

my store does have free wifi, but no idea how I'd use that to make phone calls / texts

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/23/14 at 19:41:43

Art, how much would you like to bet me on your bet? How expensive are your hats?

Especially after you done told me you gots wifi out there for the pluckin'. You will have to share your wifi password with me of course unless you have left your router open to the public (and most businesses that see you as a repeat customer really don't mind sharing the password so you can get calls in their store because the data load for calls is so miniscule for simple words and text (jest a few kilobytes) so yep, even the ones that don't offer an open router to the public will let you take a call).

I bets you the same $179 phone running only just the $5 a month cheapie Republic Wireless plan can let you sit in your wifi equipped store and do calls ALL OVER THE WORLD and TEXT ditto ditto ditto and also get unlimited fast internet searches all day long (or until your router resets itself due to the constant use, anyway).

$5 a month for the plan & $179 pay me cash up front for the special guts modified phone.

Like Art, at work I have a campus jest slam full of open wifi so I gots $5 plan Republic wifi coverage at work and at home.

But since the upgrade plans are so durn cheap that for my wife I'd hedge my bets with some 3-G cell tower coverage for her phone calls made when away from good wifi (while driving for example) with the $10 a month plan .... and for some vacation craziness I'd opt up to do a week at the $25 a month plan rate (yep, that's $5 whole dollars pro-rated for an entire week's worth of splurging on the unlimited everything max 3-G coverage plan that will mate up right well with the 3-G Moto G phone).

Hey Art, really, I don't have to know how to make it work -- Republic builds it right into the guts of the special phones so you don't HAVE to understand how it works. It just does, and it switches off automatically between wifi and cellular depending on where you are and which signal is coming through better.

But is sounds like Republic Wireless was made for you, buddy.

https://republicwireless.com/info/phones/moto-g-1st-gen/

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/23/14 at 20:04:12

Google owned Motorola during the period of time when the Moto G was being developed and built. This means it was Googlicious (packed with modern features and power and then sold at a very low price).

Let young skinny tech chick Erica tell you about it -- she does such a good job.

Just click on the link and Erica will take over and give you the whole spiel on the Moto G, including all the water resistance tests.

:D

just click on it, worth your time, really https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeJdCl7HO2g

FAIR WARNING: The Moto G is not hot greasy spicy oriental dim sum soup proof -- Erica finally did kill hers with some hot greasy salty spicy Japanese type soup in a later review.

Another reviewer dude had to run over his with a Volkswagen bug (after the 30 minute water soak testing) to force the water into the guts deep enough to temporarily kill his Moto G.

(but when he dried it back out over his heat vent at home it came back to life, unaffected except for the tire prints on the plastic rear cover)

;) tough arsed, durable, quick phones, the original Moto G

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Tocsik on 12/23/14 at 20:31:51

I got the first gen Moto X for my first 'smart' phone.
Love it. With the Google design and minimalist Android OS, it does things no other phone does.
New version is a little bigger. One reason I liked the phone was it's small size but I think I would appreciate the bigger screen now.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Art Webb on 12/23/14 at 21:31:43

6340484A494040495E2C0 wrote:

I stand corrected, didn't know wifi allowed calling, when I tried to sign up with that other internet phone thing (that goes through your PC) it said I didn't have enough 'puter to use it, who knew a cell phone had that much capacity?
Still, before we opened the wifi, your phone would likely not have worked in my store, cell service is terrible
I'll have to look up the price of a hat, locally (not going to cheat by using the $3 baseball cap you can buy at walmart)

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/24/14 at 09:38:46

Save the cost of that hat and apply it towards your next phone -- I enjoy the hunting and searching as it gives me something to do. And I don't wear hats, I am a toboggan sort of guy.

But you gotta admit, $179 for a phone and a plan that ranges from $10 up to $25 a month will save a lot of us Hundreds of Dollars a year compared to what we are doing now.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by old_rider on 12/24/14 at 09:53:38

My brother and I used to do "internet chat night" on Saturday evenings.. we would use yahoo chat and video conference.
After about a year it got kinda old.... but with todays smart phone tech. you can Skype using Wi-Fi....
If the phone automatically uses any open Wi-Fi for free calling... that would be awesome, you would just have to find the "open" router to make those long distance calls... which are becoming a thing of the past with all the companies now.
In a big city I could see an advantage of this technology, as most places offer "free Wi-Fi", but in the rural area's it would be kinda useless.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Art Webb on 12/24/14 at 21:38:20

And I am sorta rural, though I don't phone much
These days I want my phone to work anywhere, or close to it, in case I break down or crash on one of my longer rides
my Galaxy S3 was $279, and it's about new, so it'll be a while before i replace it, though I like the MotoGs toughness, and my $45 unlimited everything (including long distance, but not out of country) still seems like a decent cost to me for what I get, so I'm still pretty happy

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Art Webb on 12/24/14 at 21:49:45

496A6260636A6A6374060 wrote:

A bet's a bet, I was about to ask if you had Paypal or if I should mail the check: a decent hat seems to run around $60+ these days, that'd pay your phone bill for the year or more lol
But I guess it ain't welshing if you let me off like that

(i have a boonine hat I get pretty fond of during the hotter summer months, myself)

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/25/14 at 07:28:12

It was never a bet since I already knew the answer, since because of that knowledge there was no element of chance or risk -- I would have to think that would actually be closer to the definition of a con job than a bet and I wouldn't do that.

Plus, until I've actually gone and done it, it is all theory.

Besides, instead of a $180 phone I want to find a way to get a HUNDRED dollar phone to go along with my $10 phone plan.

And I think I may be able to do that. When the new Moto G comes out at Republic a whole lot of the immortal little original Moto G's will hit Swappit for lower and lower ever cheaper dollars. A new battery would cost $16 if one winds up being needed.

=======================================

Any good plan requires a point of commitment.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31AOIiDhhzL.jpg

$4 isn't much of a commitment, but it is a start.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/27/14 at 05:45:39

As often happens in tech, while you are researching a path to get to your goal, somebody just goes and puts a product on the market that EXCEEDS your goal.

I was looking at a MOTO G 4.5 inch screen unit but was getting stopped by the lack of SD expansion and the relative rarity of a Moto G that had enough memory and 4G LTE capability (chasing down the T-Mobil track with the family plan thing).

Then BLU drops these little puppies into the mixture .... built to be "bring your own phone" to the T-Mobile plan, sold by Amazon and Walmart, not hard to come by at all.

Sorta blows up my $180 phone search, don't it? Yeah, $114 sorta does that, doesn't it?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P06A7Z2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00P06A7Z2&linkCode=as2&tag=bradlindsdigi-20&linkId=NEBNCW3RKR573JHU

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71jhLyl9dAL._SL1500_.jpg

FURTHERMORE, I was background searching a bigger Moto X type phone and BLU just dropped one of those at $100 less money .....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QKVEUFO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00QKVEUFO&linkCode=as2&tag=bradlindsdigi-20&linkId=LBXP6XTTMZVCZAJX

So, my $180 search now is fulfilled by a $114 phone and now has a $199 alternative that is a 5" screen bigger high spec'd phone that is one size bigger screen and has most of the feature pack of a Moto X phone.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81qz43YOLnL._SL1500_.jpg

Danger with BLU is that it is a Florida based US import firm that imports "name branded" Chinese throw away phones and does not upgrade them at all for software or anything else. Nor do they really honor their warranty, just reading user comments on Amazon.

So, BLU is "throwaway quality" and mediocre durability. They contract for a big batch of name branded phones, sell them all out then go on to the next new item.

Quality varies on a per phone basis. Once an item gets replaced by something new, it goes to Woot and Ebay for a sell off before the batteries get stale .....

::)

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/27/14 at 06:05:18

Deep breath time ......

I was looking into a new type of phone service that offered far cheaper data plans -- then T-Mobile drops suddenly drops down into the same price range for their no contract family plans.

I was looking for a Moto G phone (figuring it was the least expensive thing going and finding the right Moto G would make or break the pathway I took). Then BLU starts selling T-Mobile "bring your own phone" drop in phones for $100 less than that Motorola phone is even when on sale ......

I am three full months away from spitting on my next phone and plan --- and by then BLU will have yet another even newer phone out and this current one will be at WOOT being sold off for cheap. T-Mobile may have yet another new plan, or they may have forced Verizon to "get into the program" by stealing all their customers.

Change, she is jest a coming on strong all the time, ain't she?

:D ...... it sometimes plumb amazes me how durn fast it can come, sometimes ......

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by old_rider on 12/28/14 at 19:46:17

New sprint commercials with the "we will half your bill", but you have to buy their phones.....wonder if they sell the moto X?

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/28/14 at 23:35:21

Well, my thinking goes like this ......

Mobile cell phone service here in the USA has been way over-priced like forever.

T-Mobile got their butt into a wringer and had to downsize themselves pretty drastically 2 years ago, so now they are on the rebuild using only the brand new big modern 4G towers which are being shared between all the carriers.

T-Mobile put out some no-contract unlimited calls and text family plans going as low as $100 per month for 4 people with 5 gigs of high speed 4-G LTE data to be split out between the 4 people -- but they do allow you to roll over your unused 5 gigs of data for 1 year, so data essentially became limitless for normal users (our family doesn't use but 2-3 gigs of data in a normal month anyway).

T-Mobile suddenly became THE BEST & FASTEST 4-G LTE CARRIER in the country and began growing, taking share from everybody else.

Sprint tried to merge with T-Mobile, but that deal fell through and Sprint is the one who is hurting now and doing the downsizing and not liking it for much.

Verizon and AT&T are fat dumb and happy and are NOT going to be lowering their prices one iota -- until they wake up one day and find some flaming handwriting up on their walls.

Sad note: Republic Wireless, the guys who started all this insanity to going in the first place are losing their small market share too since their prices are "relatively normal" to both T-Mobile and Sprint now and their service is 3-G Sprint based (the current loser as far as data speed goes).

Plus, the wifi calling is the new big thing, the new super tech T-Mobile is going with right now so big time, so Republic actually started something good that T-Mobile has glommed on to big time. T-Mobile will even now give you a T-Mobile Hot Spot for you to carry to work so your entire office can have their wifi calling service.

Old slow 3-G service, who wants it? Wifi calling and wifi data is 4x faster and so is the new 4-G LTE.

(surprise, cellular 4-G service itself is actually based on wifi protocols so don't be surprised if everyone begins offering wifi calling off any local router along with their newer 4-G phone and service offerings)

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/29/14 at 00:25:31

Next thought is about the Android optimizations that have taken place in the last two years which have pretty much obliviated the need for using super powerful phone chips.

Qualcomm came out with new chipsets to meet the lowered requirements of the new Android Kit Kat and Lollipop OS systems -- and they use quad core A-53 chipsets and the weaker of them that are quite popular right now is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400's which are all old quad core A-7s die shrunk to 20nm.

Hey, Price rules if performance is good -- and right now the totally integrated Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 is the chip to beat for use in a mid range cell phone.

There is leakage upstream from all this OS optimization -- this is a Utilite2 desktop Linux PC built using a Qualcomm 600 chipset.

Take notice, Intel, within a year I will show you Windows PCs running on these sorts of chipsets in form factors that look a lot like this. The Tegra K1 laptop stuff that is upsetting you so much right now is only the first of many to come roost on your doorstep ......

(Apple is next, old boy)

http://cdn.liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/utilite2.jpg

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by justin_o_guy2 on 12/29/14 at 01:23:50

You mean a computer will be a tiny box? Wheres the monitor?

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/29/14 at 08:09:31

I think the monitor is separate for most PCs ..... this one would require an HDMI monitor as do most totally modern things any more.

I guess the point was that ARM phone chips are now powerful enough to run a PC .... so Intel can expect to see a lot more of that happening when MS finishes their "do everything all the same" Win 10 operating system.

And when Intel has to compete against ARM on price up inside PC space (do PC price supports) they will not have a PC cash cow to milk to support all those contra revenue efforts ..... not unless they want to milk the server chip business to support the PC business that is.

;) eventually Intel will not have anything to "rob Peter to pay Paul".

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by TrevorKlein on 12/29/14 at 10:38:06

there are many selections myself I got a Samsung Galaxy Sdous 2

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by old_rider on 12/30/14 at 00:05:06

Wife pointed out something to me about the Wi-Fi aspect of calling.... using "just any" Wi-Fi could cause serious software concerns.
What are they doing about phone software safety when using a "guest" Wi-Fi at a local restaurant, hotel, ect... for a phone call?
Are they going to use anti-virus software for phones now too?
I'm going to have to read up on all this, before I jump in the pool.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 12/30/14 at 04:02:52

Good question from somebody who comes from the Windows environment and is Always Concerned about that sort of stuff.

REAL DAMAGING Malwares for Android ...... have a very short life span because new .x.x versions of Android are pushed at least bi-yearly and the old malware jest wasn't built for the new just released environment. Plus the Linux Kernel folks or Google will patch any key exposure points that anything hooks on to very rapidly.

Remember, Android is Linux -- and as such has very few places to gain access to damage your system.

There have only been like 10 real damaging Linux/Android malwares written that actually went out into the world in any significant fashion, all of which got obliviated very shortly at their hook point.

Getting hold of your data in some fashion comes under the Ad-wares ...... things that seek data from your phone and report back to somebody are legion in Android right now. Ditto for Apple products. Lots of folks want to get to your personal data and send it somewhere else.

http://forensics.spreitzenbarth.de/android-malware/

You have people who are trying to sell you Android AV (really anti-adware) products now, but I question why you should be paying money for a product that will have the same very short effective life as the Android version it was written to protect.

Besides, your carrier sells your data all the time, for an average of $2.83 per sale, to whomever wants to buy it. So does your browser of choice. And so does MS, or Google, your OS provider. Everybody sells your data, and you should go check periodically to see who you are as shown to the folks who are buying you all the time.

Anyone who thinks there is anonymity on the web anywhere -- is simply delusional.

Amazon sells the best picture of me that anybody has, based off of what I buy and look at on Amazon -- it is a little confused though because my wife and I use the same ID.

;)

Using hot spots (commercial access points) does get spoofed a lot by data stealers. You click on something "to give you access" to a commercial hot spot and 4 times out of 10 you are clicking to give an Ad-ware root access to your device to add a piece of crap to your system.

Good news is that out of these 4 in 10 spoofing nasty grams, almost all of them assume you are using a Windows system and what you get sits in a recently created sub directory in your "drive C:" a new drive that was helpfully created by your Linux/Android system just so your new crapwares would have a place to go sit by their selves (and work real hard on screwing each other up, of course).

Now your data flow when using a public hot spot is always totally exposed and the software/hardware of your commercial hot spot itself has likely been compromised by several different people as well.

Take a bigger picture and realize that the NSA actively monitors all flow through the info-net be it cellular or internet based and they tap into the internet nodes themselves (they own them) and they have access to all cell towers. If you are tagged by the cops, every bit of everything you have done is available to the NSA.

NSA can key your phone (since it is always on anyway) and they can track you and hear/record everything you are close to and even branch out to listen to adjacent devices to hear what they can hear and see what they can see if there is a camera around anywhere. If you phone is out the cameras will show them both sides of what your phone cameras can see

George Orwell has nothing on the NSA as far as any Big Brother tricks goes.

Live in England (where every inch of a city is under camera from all angles all the time) and they can see you from 3 exterior angles all the time as well.

Now, since I have given you lots to think about, do you think that using the new wifi phones will increase your exposure any? Please remember that 4-G LTE is a wifi technology and your 4-G LTE calls are technically called VoLTE calls (voice over Long Term Evolution) which is digitized voice over a pure data line.

(ie wifi calling)

In short, if you are using LTE, you are already doing wifi calls to those big honkin' tall LTE wifi towers. T-Mobile and the others are just off-loading some of their workload to any smaller adjacent local routers to save them some bandwidth.

And hey, your "exposure" is already pretty much total anyway.

If you yearn for peace and protection, there is some hope for you out there ........

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/smoky-mountain-falls-paul-w-faust-impressions-of-light.jpg

The OS that is noted by all as the most contained, bullet proof OS out there right now is ChromeOS, simply because it is net filtered (anti-crap filtered) through the Google server farms continuously and each window open on your personal device is individually sandboxed so if you do catch a piece of crap it can only blow up that one, temporarily open window.

And yes, it is getting easier and easier to recommend ChromeOS as expressed on a Chromebook or Chromebox as being a good alternative to Windows because with the integration of Chrome/Android/Linux/all major PC softwares now being real and on line there simply isn't anything a ChromeOS device cannot do.

Off line uses have become completely solid this year, with all the Google Apps running off line, all the Android apps running off line and all of the Linux apps running off line.

OS and software are free, and if you must have AutoCad or Adobe Print Shop, it is now available as a pay me online software.

Printing has gotten straight this year with all new printers supporting Google Cloud Print and all HP printers (old or new) being covered by HP's E-print driver which now supports Google Cloud Print as well.

Wifi printing is now the operant standard in the printing industry.

Your old style cable printer can work with Google Cloud Printing if you have it attached to a device that is running Chrome browser. Google can work through that attached device's Chrome browser installation to Cloud Print from any device anywhere to your old cable style printer.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by savskad on 12/30/14 at 15:31:55

I'll throw in my 2-cents about all this. I had Sprint for the past ~4 years. Had my wife and I on the family plan, 2 lines, eventually ended up with 5, a friend, half-brother, and half-brother's mom, then back down to 3 lines. Finally got bored with Sprint as their 4G is horrendously slow. In fact, I had a custom Rom running on my Galaxy S4 (great phone by the way) and I could switch back and forth manually between 3G and 4G. At times, I would jump over to 3G if 4G seemed slow and BOOM! Facebook would start loading way faster.

My theory...Sprint has "Truly Unlimited" 4G service, sooo everybody uses excessively and because of this, Sprint doesn't bother upgrading towers or anything because if they're not making any more profit off of it, why should they? Which would be all fine and dandy except...T-Mobile rolls out their "We'll pay your ETF's so you can break-up with your carrier" and to guys like me who really don't have a reason to stick around, we switch over.

I've been with T-Mobile now for a little over a month. I'm having mixed feelings, I don't know whether to begin with pros or cons, so I'll start with the bad, and hope the good will sweeten the deal again. (Not recruiting, just don't wanna think I made a bad decision by switching.)

Cons:
-The "Pay your ETFs" is a reimbursement, meaning if you're like me, living paycheck to paycheck, that $450 might be more than you can afford at the time. It can take up to 2 months to receive the reimbursement.

-I got the Sony Xperia Z3 (it's full waterproof [submergible] to 5 feet for 30 minutes). I am a huge Sony fan, always wanted a Sony phone, but Sprint did not, and still does not offer one. Got the phone, T-Mobile forces you to trade in your old phone and buy a new one either cash, or finance it out over 24 months. 0% interest though. Anyways, my phone's screen crapped out probably 15 or 16 days after I got it, went back, they told me they'd replace it because it was still under warranty. They didn't mention it would be with a Refurbished phone. I don't trust refurbished phones, never have, never will. Fact of the matter is, I paid for a NEW, free-of-defects, phone. What I got was a new, defective phone. Replaced with a once defective, but fixed used phone. In my honest opinion, better customer service could have been given by allowing a month to return defective phones and still receive a new phone. This "con" is debatable on whether or not it's T-Mobile's fault, it could have been Sony's fault for making a defective device. I had seen it's not uncommon to have screen problems with Sony phones.

Constant issues with making calls. Like 50% of the time it doesn't go through the first time, I have to hang up, try again, usually it works on the 2nd try, if not I have to try again then it usually works fine. Haven't had any issues receiving any calls though. That's only over the cell network. We can set our phones up to do Wifi calling where it defaults to calling over wifi networks, when I do it that way, making a call isn't a problem, however, maintaining the call is usually a problem, since if there is any little hesitation in wifi connection, it drops. And say you leave your wifi in the middle of a call, you have to hang up and wait for it to connect over the cell network. (That feature can be disabled or set to prefer cell network over wifi.)

Pros:

I will say one of the big reasons I do not regret switching, the 4G is lightning fast! (Compared to Sprint at least) I mean, it's like just a step down from Wifi speeds. And the bill will come out to be hopefully less than Sprint's was. (It's hard to gauge since I have only 2 lines with T-Mobile, and for a while with Sprint it was at least 3 or more lines).

No contract. For the cell phone service that is. If you buy the phones cash, no contract. If you finance, you have a contract til the phones are paid off. For some people this ain't such a bad deal. I can throw any extra cash I get at paying it off, and once I do I can leave anytime I want. Plus and Plus in my opinion. With Sprint, I was stuck waiting it out or having to come up with extra money for the ETF.

$100 for 2 lines, unlimited 4G. (Limited time offer) We signed on with 3gig of 4G each for $100, a couple weeks later they came out with the unlimited offer. I went in, the T-Mobile rep did his little thing and BAM! we got unlimited 4G and were paying no more. After you go over your initial 4G limit, T-Mobile then would throttle you back to 2G. In this case I was just relying more heavily on my Wifi usage. Now that it's unlimited though, I don't worry too much about it. When I'm at home I stick to wifi, when I'm at work or anywhere else, I don't pay too much attention to it.

You can use any "unlocked" phone you want. Meaning, if it has a spot for a sim-card and isn't a Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T, phone. You can use it with T-Mobile. I mentioned I have the Sony Xperia Z3, my coworker bought the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact direct from Sony and put it on his T-Mobile plan without a problem. (Identical to my phone in every way, just smaller).

All in all, I'm glad I switched, I use data WAAAYYY more than I used traditional calling. I still call a lot though. But having slow data vs. having to hang up and try again.

There was nothing more frustrating than trying to show a funny video to a friend on youtube and then when you go to show it you get the spinning loading image................................................................still loading........................still loading........................finally! loaded! 5 seconds later..................loading................and I'm sitting there feeling like a jack#%% and eventually would give up. Now, I NEVER have that problem.

If you use data often, want to be free of contract, and have cash to buy the phone out-right. I recommend switching to T-Mobile ASAP to catch that 2-line unlimited 4G deal. You will be grandfathered in whenever the deal goes away. In the future I plan on just buying my phones cash, from the manufacturer and just putting a T-Mobile sim card in it. That way if I have any defective phone, I can work that out with the manufacturer instead of T-Mobile. Since I'm pretty sure the way the do it is, **Someone correct me if I'm wrong**, T-Mobile tells Sony, "Hey! We want 10,000 Xperia phones for our service, all of them to be black in color. No, no thank you, we don't want to offer white, or green, or brown, all of them black. Yes, and no thank you, but we only want the full sized one, so it impales our customer's legs if they try to put it in their front jean pocket and sit on a motorcycle. We do not want the compact, decent sized one." Then Sony preps all those phones and sell the lot to T-Mobile. Then when my phone's screen breaks, it's a issue between me and T-Mobile, not Sony.

So I've already had my ups and downs with T-Mobile, but I prefer a company that makes me happy on a daily basis, and only disappoints a few days out of a year than Sprint which disappoints every day of the year and only makes me happy the day I upgrade to get a new phone.

TL;dr Sprint sucks and overcharges, T-Mobile's pros outweigh their con's, and they're relatively cheap.

Hope I covered everything. I'll add more in another reply if I remember something.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by old_rider on 12/30/14 at 18:08:54

Thanks for the sprint input...., I have four phones....me, my wife, my sister-in-law and a close friend of mine.
Currently I am paying Verizon on the average of $180 a month... I have a 750min shared plan... and most times we do not go over it.
I have only two of the phones on the 250 texts ...only allows two phones to have it... and that is where the extra costs are hitting me.
Verizon has a plan for $160 dollars for free text and calls and 2g data, for up to 5 phones. But if they are smart phones.... add an extra $30 each for data access... so that would be $220, and add in fees.... for each, I would be paying about $260 bucks... so I ain't going there. These folks stick with what I give them... i'm being nice dangit...without me they would not have phones.
So I was thinking of changing to sprint.... cut my bill in half and have free text and calls? for all four? and 4Gig data to boot? I don't think they can do it..... that is why i'm still going to go see.... just to find out. I haven't asked folks around here how sprint does...almost everyone uses Verizon.
Before I left here years ago my wife and I had T-Mobile...the treated us well, even when we left and had no T-Mobile in the area I moved to, they sent me the unlock procedure for our phones.... talk about customer service!
So maybe i'll look into T-Mobile here and see also... Verizon is just too limiting for the "family plan" I have.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by savskad on 12/31/14 at 08:30:45

I have kind of been ignoring the Sprint ads recently. Last one I really noticed was the "Framily" Plan they had going on where the more people you add, the cheaper it is! Everyone has their own bill so there isn't any confusion. I don't buy into it because I'm sure they have all sorts of smartphones are an additional $10 charges stuck on there like they did when I was with them. Plus, I never researched it too much, but like they have always done, they are probably gonna stick all (X amount of lines) into a big fat 2-year contract and make it impossible for anyone to leave until the contract is up. My dad kept trying to get me to join his framily plan about 6 months back...I gave him the ol' "Sure dad, well I'll check it out..." run around because he can never take "No" for an answer. Anyways...3 or 4 days ago...he's asking me about T-Mobile because he's tired of Sprint. He has been a Sprint customer for the past 15 years because back when cell phones were just wireless phones, Sprint was the only one that had decent reception at our house, (Mind you we live in Austin, so it's not like were out in the country). Now that the tables have turned, he isn't so prone to stay with them. I originally got with Sprint because my Dad had always seemed pretty happy with them. I'm disappointed to say they seem to have lost their edge on the game.

Moral of the story: I'd stay away from a lot of these gimmicky deals sprint is offering. T-Mobile is somewhat gimmicky themselves, but as always, no contract on the service. So you can leave anytime you want.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 01/03/15 at 19:08:38

Well, having dug at it for a few weeks now it becomes clear that everyone other than Republic Wireless is planning on leveraging off of Google Hangouts (i.e. Google voice) to do their wifi only no cost calling. $7 a month is the cheapest that any of the Google based guys can do right now, and there are some tweeks you have to do ongoing with their stuff right now.

Republic Wireless has a $5 wi-fi only plan that does require one of their tweeked phones but it only requires you to set up a wifi source just once. It has "move your old number over" service and Republic has been at this long enough to have worn off most of the sharp corners to their hybrid wifi/cell service.

The key to the Wifi thing working well is the carefully tweeked hardware and refined over the years switching software that resides inside a Republic Wireless phone. It is the total package that works in such an appealing fashion at a realistic $10 a month price point.

Republic Wireless does promote the reuse of their phones, so if you buy a used Republic Wireless phone on Ebay it can live again after being re-initialized under your name. Insist that the seller verify the MEID number (serial number) of the phone to verify that it will re-initialize on the Republic Wireless system by having him go here and try it out BEFORE he sells it to you.

https://community.republicwireless.com/docs/DOC-2002

Also, you need to make sure you buy a phone that can run on the current $5 and $10 plans. Why? Some of the two (2) previous generations of Republic Wireless Phones out there on Ebay will only run on either an antique 2-G / 3-G ($19.99 plan) or else you got the original Alpha stage LG RW phones which are not supported at all any more by anything -- period.

Funny thing, the old RW $19.99 2-G / 3-G plan that runs on the Motorola Defy (dual band) XT costs $19.99 a month for unlimited everything, but the phones have memory and screens that are so tiny and the service is so sloooooow and the call quality is so grainy that you don't really want it, but you can still buy these old Defy dual band XT phones on Ebay for around $30 dealer refurbished even as we speak.

So, please do buy yourself a more modern phone and please do make sure you get 16 gigs of memory in your more modern style phone, as the 8 gig phones fill up with the larger more modern apps pretty quickly and stuff like navigator apps and modern games do eat up a lot of storage memory.

So, I spent $150 on a used modern style 16 gig Moto G phone, which was about the going Ebay price for a Republic Wireless 16 gig Moto G right now. Paying taxes and fees on the same 16 gig phone when brand new runs the cost up to right at $207.

(Yup, I punched one up all the way to the final click to find out what the "fees & surcharges" bite would really be if I bought one brand new).

Buying a used Republic Wireless phone is a crapshoot quality wise like on any used cell phone purchase -- I bid on two phones one of which was "never used" as the teenage girl held out for an iPhone like all her girlfriends had (and her Daddy loved her enough to geek one over eventually, too) and the other one was actually used for 8 months by somebody about like us.

The "like new - never used" one sold finally at $5 less than retail (I really don't understand people once they get themselves into an E-bone bidding frenzy) and then there was the one I actually did buy that topped out at $50 less than a new one -- not so wonderful on the price but that is where they run day in & day out on Ebay.

I guess the used Republic Wireless Moto G is just right for cheapie people like us, I guess.

My phone and my first month of $10 plan will waggle out right about $160 to get me started -- and I will have 2 additional months after that to decide if I can live with the real service level that is actually really there at a $10 per month level or whether I need to jump into the $25 a month T-Mobile Family Plan 4-G LTE pool with everyone else come April.

Plus, I know I can resell the Republic Wireless Moto G on E-bone for at least 85% of what I paid for it.

And I also know I can opt into the T-Mobile family plan later on as an "add in a line" at any time as because it is a no-contract plan. This will also depend on how much a phone can be gotten for and how the various BYOP charges go with T-Mobile. More will be known about it at that point in time.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 01/04/15 at 10:16:59

Now, I have a pre-CES show prediction on phones to make.

GSM phones (T-Mobile and AT&T type phones, T-Mobile most specifically) are going to drop in cost and take a big leap forward in feature/performance. The CDMA based Sprint/Verizon phones will take a big drop back (relatively speaking) in terms of feature/performance and will not make the low cost leap that the GSM phones from T-Mobile will make.

Why? Chinese standard Android phones are all unlocked and they all run advanced forms of GSM and only T-Mobile is currently set up to use these modern forms of GSM as their new 4-G LTE (advanced) service.

"Bring your own phones" for the new no-contract T-Mobile service will come oriental stock from BLU and from Xiaomi, both of which are going to start selling killer type phones for less than $200 here in the USA starting later this year.

And they will only run as BYOP on T-Mobile at first as only T-Mobile was far sighted enough (cheap enough) to debut their new tower systems at a pretty much bone stock unlocked Chinese standards level.

CDMA type folks who want to build up some same-same sorts of competitive products are going up against volumes of scale issues that are Oriental sized when they try to put forward USA phones built only at "smaller" USA volumes. GSM is 80%+ of the world market now and CDMA is 20% and dropping ...... so Verizon and Sprint are on the wrong end of this equation at this point in time.

Look to see T-Mobile grow and grow and grow, especially since you can sometimes get AT&T to unlock certain types of AT&T phones and then you can BYOP your unlocked AT&T phone over to T-Mobile and save the cost of that new phone to get at the cheaper T-Mobile Un-carrier data plan rates.

Sprint has already cracked on their pricing structure (being the low man on the totem pole helped them "get real" early on) but Verizon and AT&T are still "too big" to see the handwriting just yet. Sprint's issue now is they are too small for getting the very best phone pricing and their native service type isn't in line with the oriental base standard at all ...... so Sprint is jest plain SOL in other words.

BTW, the orientals do believe in Wifi Calling so AT&T and Verizon and Sprint have something else they need to incorporate into their worlds pretty durn quickly as well.

T-Mobile is already there on wifi calling, and could offer some even lower cost plans accordingly if they wanted to.

==================================

I now count 25 USA app based providers of pure wifi based calling and fully expect two dozen more to come into being this upcoming year. Some of the newest little new guys are going with a slightly modified Google Hangouts base on their stuff and that is practically FREE right now and by the time they and Google mature their separate pieces of their joint system it may indeed wind up being very useful and very low cost.

Believe it or not Apple is now becoming a leader in the wifi calling realm. Their app store is plumb lousy with the things.

Right now Republic Wireless is the only one mature enough to offer a seamless hybrid wifi/cell system on a relatively low cost cell phone, and they will charge you $10 a month for their lowest level of hardware based conjoined wifi/cell hybrid system.

My wife will require the $10 a month Republic Wireless system so she can be happy making phone calls from the car (with me driving of course) and I could be content with the $5 a month pure wifi calling plan since I stay close to a router just about all the time. Or perhaps I could be happy with one of the crowd of brand new freebie Android apps that just sprang up overnight running on my old cell phone.

T-Mobile does have an oriental standards based wi-fi calling system in place, but it only runs as part of their full cost $25 a month plans. Republic does have $5, $10 and $25 true wifi/cell hybrid plans. T-Mobile will let you BYOP a cheaper stock oriental android phone though.

I suspect this will all change drastically inside the next year, with Google and an international partner or two will be actually touching their tongues to the flag pole intentionally (but only doing it overseas in some the warmer climates where flag pole tongue touching is still kinky, but completely legal and above board).

Once all the USA players are doing it, Google will bring theirs to the USA for free.

Apple is embracing wifi calling now with their latest most expensive $600 really big dollar iPhones, so expect wifi calling to be considered "cool" by all the "in" kids going forward.

Apple may be the one that plows the "acceptance" trail in the USA, since they can "app it away" for free on their uber expensive phones just to tweek 'ol Google's nose a bit.

(Apple likes doing that, they do) Google can't go out and piss off all their Android cell phone providers/customers all that directly, but Apple most certainly can.

All phone plans are going to eventually get a good bit cheaper though, soon enough. Sprint will start to fade away and they and AT&T will be forced to change over to GSM phones when it gets bad enough.

;D ..... dem blustery winds of change, she blows right hard against dem fat 'ol phone companies, she does .....

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 01/04/15 at 12:43:47

Ooooh baby, take a lookie see at this link ......

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=wifi%20calling%20unlimited%20free&hl=en

What does this all mean? Take your out of service wifi capable phone and go see ..... you might be able to do a heck of alot more with that old phone than just put it on your handlebars as a GPS unit.

:D

Wowsers, baby -- go check out Viber for just one of the many many many new ones.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.viber.voip&hl=en

Ditto for Talkatone (it will actually go get your contacts off a Google backup and set itself up for you)

http://www.talkatone.com/

There is a cost associated with all these players (they must make a small buck along the way to keep in existence). Most will either charge you for making outgoing calls either by charging you credits (which you must replace by purchasing more of them) or some such other means of taking your money.

Viber for example has free calling back and forth between other Viber members (same sort of thing is common between a lot of the rest of them as well).

The only one doing completely free stuff is Google, but Google Voice requires you to jump through some minor hoops to use it. Plus Google is killing off Google voice fairly soon so as to keep their Android handset makers and their big telecom customers happy.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 01/06/15 at 10:15:37

Checked out Talkatone ..... very easy install, outgoing calls cost you a credit a minute and 60 credits cost you 99 cents, so your outbound calls to non-Talkatone folks cost 1.6 cents a minute.

So far the fledgling Talkatone service will work, but not flawlessly -- some call receivers claim there is no volume at all on their end, just a ghost of your voice comes through.

Cost to investigate so far -- 99 cents for sixty credit minutes of outbound calls. Even if Talkatone is a flop it was easy and cheap to check up on it.

Title: Re: Quest for the $180 smart phone
Post by Oldfeller on 01/06/15 at 23:07:49

Drafted my son-in-law to do a little cross comparison calling using the new FREE wifi calling apps, specifically Talkatone and Viber as they are currently rated as the best of the brand new bunch of brand new wifi phone apps.

Talkatone sux -- sorry, it is just very very poor sound quality. Also it takes you 5 clicks to make a call off of your favorites list and three clicks to end the call and to shut down the app.

Viber is much better, two clicks to make the call and one to end it (and that shuts down the app). Viber is MUCH easier to use, neater graphics and VIBER HAS GOOD SOUND QUALITY.

Viber also lets you pick your Viber number, mine happened to be picked to be my normal old cell phone number, so guess what, I don't have to pay somebody $45 to let me reuse my old phone number when my service ends.

Viber also strives for completely free and all calls and texts between Viber users are 100% free. Viber must charge for calls made outside the Viber family as they have to route it through Sprint's service, but such calls (Viber -> out, they call them) only cost you 1.9 cents a minute to make.

=================================

I don't make a lot of calls myself, really. Most of my phone calling is to family and most of that is in response to my wife and daughter.

My wife and my daughter need a full cell phone service for road calls, etc. in case of a flat tire, etc. I really need to be able to GET a call more than anything else.

So, I am considering getting my wife a Republic Wireless $10 a month set up that allows her to call anyone from anywhere. I might be able to just keep my old phone once it is off Verizon's dollar sucking machine and use wifi and Viber to make my relatively few needed calls.

I can get Viber put on to all my family members phones so when I ring them or text them it goes through by Viber >IN< for free. They can text me if I happen to be out of wifi range and the text will pop up and signal the inbound text sound just as soon as I am back in wifi range. This will cause me to check the text message.

The text might be as complicated as "call me", which I would then be able to do.

Viber and others are striving to make wifi calling a free reality --- with this many guys trying to pull it off, I think they may eventually be successful at it. If you are interested in a full lesson that explains the whole thing in all its NON-complexity, go here.

http://heavy.com/tech/2014/07/how-to-use-viber-app-to-send-text-messages-and-make-free-calls/ the pricing of .099 and 4.99 mentioned is for bulk purchase of minute certificates

If you get the impression AT&T and Verizon might jest be dinosaurs in the making -- ya got it !!! $4.99 worth of minute certificates would last me a year, most likely as most of my calls will be >IN< Viber to my family.

Remember, Viber runs off any phone, any tablet, any PC, literally just about any device at all with wifi and a mic and a speaker.