Smartphones

[tamakun]

Eventually, I'll put up a post about Anime North (It'll be short, but with pretty pictures, I promise!) but in the meantime I've had my mind on other things. Recently, it's been smartphones, and that even came up during the convention.

I've been thinking about upgrading from my "dumbphone" to an Android. As I'm with Virgin Mobile and I've been getting monthly "kickbacks" into my account, I have about $50 stored up in there. It's not much, but I figured I could use that as credit towards a smartphone.

Now, Virgin Mobile's selection for Androids is pretty weak. There's only four phones. And of those phones, one of them (the Galaxy 550) looks small and old, so that's right out.

I tweeted this morning asking if people would suggest one over the other, and jonofthewired gave me a little insight, in telling me that the Incredible S and the Galaxy S are better units, and they seem to be higher-powered than the other ones (and look prettier, too). This is also reflected in their cost, in that if I were to purchase one outright without a plan, I'd be shelling out $500. I checked them out today, and the Galaxy S looks pretty sweet and sharp, but the HTC Incredible S was not powered-up so I had no idea what it looks or feels like. (Which is not exactly a good way to sell a product!)

Now, the problem comes with the cost. I can get these phones for cheap if I latch myself into a 3-year term (I've been on a month-by-month prepaid plan for the past 2 years), and I found out that I can get a plan without the data - but that I would have to spring $200 for the phone.
- I'm currently paying $20 a month for a 200-minute plan (and $5/month is "kickback" into my account). I've had that phone for 2 years, I've talked for 28 hours total over that 2 years, which means I hardly use an hour per month on this phone. (!! This thing's practically new still.)
- The talk/data plan they offer would be $40 for basic data (100MB) and 150 Anytime minutes.
- A fairly-good-deal I was musing over would be a 100-minute plan with unlimited-talk evenings/weekends for $25/month, with no data plan (and I disable the 3G on the phone). Not too bad, and adding the $200 smartphone cost would only add $5.55 to the monthly bill, so I'd go to about $30-32, but that does technically double my phone bill.

Now, Virgin's also got a deal going on until June 3rd (end-of-day on the 2nd, actually - which is tomorrow!) where if I buy one of those smartphones, I'd get either $50 or $100 off, and I have that $50 in credit from my two years of service, so a smartphone wouldn't cost me much at all, it'd just double my monthly fees for three years.

So yeah, right now though, I'm going to wait a bit. The current deal ends in 2 days, so maybe they'll have a new offer on Friday. Maybe they'll have new smartphones. Plus, if I look forward to COBS, it may require me to be on the phone more (which means "new job gift" for myself), or conversely, I will be earning less so I might want to save my money (which means I'll stick with the KRZR for a bit longer). Craigslist has not been useful for this - everyone's selling their smartphones for their full retail price.

Thoughts?

Comments

[scruloose.livejournal.com]

I suggest shopping around at the different cellular carriers before signing anything. Telus hasn't done anything to piss me off beyond my baseline annoyance at the cellular industry's shitty standard practices like 3-year contracts and "network-locking" standard phones that are built to be compatible with many different carriers' networks. Considering both the fact that I've been with them for several years and my suspicious attitude towards telecom companies in general and cellular carriers in particular, I suppose that's kind of impressive.

Sometimes, their plans are so similarly-priced that you can just hop networks whenever your contract is up, go where you can get the best deal on a phone you like. I believe we even have a "number portability" law in Canada so you don't have to change your phone number.

That being said, out of those Virgin phones I'm sure Jon's right about Samsung's Galaxy S and HTC's Incredible S being the (only) real contenders. For what it's worth, Ysa and I love our HTC phones so much it's almost embarrassing. Also, HTC has a better history of supporting updates to newer Android versions after you've bought the phone and got it home. (Though it may not really matter, it's kind of cool to note that HTC manufactured the first Android phone to come out, the Google-branded Nexus One.)

I know that Ginny went with the Samsung, and from what little I've seen it looks like a good, usable smartphone. As I recall, the main reason she chose it over the HTC Legend (which I think was the only HTC phone in the store we were at) was that it has hardware buttons for home, back, and menu. I can see that making a noticeable difference in terms of usability, but then the Incredible S has the hardware buttons and it's an HTC.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

They had another HTC, I think it must've been the Incredible, but it wasn't powered up, so I couldn't check it out.

I'm very happy with my Samsung. I have to tweak its setup, and I have some pebcak errors, but I'm pleased overall.

Something in Virgin's favour is no system access fees. Hooray! (On the downside, voicemail and caller ID are extra. *sigh*)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I think one the reasons I moved to Virgin was the no system access fees - though I'm wondering if anyone is still sneaking that in, since I don't see it mentioned on their websites (but of course they're not, right?).

I figure that I could get one of these Virgin plans that offer the choice between unlimited texting/picture sending or Voicemail/Call Display and just go with the latter - the only texting I use (short of Anime North) is for Twitter anyways, so I can forego the texting option as long as I have a Twitter client. :)

Did you get the Galaxy S? That one looks really sweet at the store...

[seangaffney.livejournal.com]

I ended up with an HTC as well, and so far it seems to work great.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the notes! I originally hopped from Bell to Virgin (just prior to Bell purchasing the other 50% of the Virgin brand, so I'm still paying Bell, it seems) and I managed to keep my number back then, too. :)

Yeah, I hadn't taken a look at the other companies since I had a $50 credit on my Virgin account, but it may be worth it - the only thing is that all the websites don't want to offer a smartphone with a non-data plan, so it looks like I'd have to contact each company individually - or go somewhere like WirelessWave - to ask them what they would do in this situation.

[sunhawk.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I nearly got the Galaxy S when I was choosing my phone, the screen on that series looks amazing!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and the "rippling", while being just a nice touch, was quite appealing to me - it really showed off the power of the hardware :)

[bassbeast.livejournal.com]

Again, wait for the Galaxy S II. Or for Ice Cream Sandwich to get released. Either way, it's a bit of an awkward time to be Canadian and getting an Android phone.

But more importantly, why do you need one? They do cost a lot more per month to maintain, and you barely use the phone you already have. Granted, I know as a fellow geek it's nice to have mobile internet, but I don't think you'll have time to enjoy it while you're in the bakery. You'll be too busy with dirty hands. ^_^ Again, knowing you as long and well as I have, I just don't see you needing one right now.

And just a correction: HTC did manufacture the first Android phone, but it was the HTC Dream, back in October 2008. The original Nexus One didn't come out for a while later. Now, Samsung manufactures the Google-branded phone, the Nexus S, but it's since been outclassed by its own Galaxy S II.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as I was saying, I might not need it - it would just be nice to have a way to check my e-mail no matter where I went, and write no matter where I was, rather than having to wait for me to find a gap in my day when it happened to coincide when I felt like writing. :P

Just a couple of days ago, I was musing to Christine about how I felt that life was too busy and complicated already. So why would I needlessly add to that by giving myself the always-connected world as well?