Advice Needed: Smartphone - NO dataplan

M

MasterTactician

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Oct 18, 2005
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My contract with Alltel is nearing its end, and I'm relishing the opportunity to upgrade to a smartphone. I'll be using it in an area that's pretty well saturated with Wi-Fi (college campus), and have no intentions of shelling out $30/month for a dataplan regardless. I don't mind switching carriers when the contract ends, and I plan to sign a new 2-yr family plan (4 lines).

My choices of carriers in my area are:
Verizon / Alltel (Best coverage, more $$$)
AT&T (Good coverage, 15% off with school discount)
Sprint (Marginal coverage, probably not an option)

ATT seems to be the only carrier to offer subsidized smartphones (-iphone) without a mandatory data plan, so I'm leaning that way. Plus, I'm sick of CDMA.

I've done a bit of looking on phones, and with the iPhone ruled out, as well as the Pre, I'm left with WinMo, Blackberry, Symbian or possibly Android if I want to buy a G1 unlocked (sacrificing 3G). Right now, I'm favoring The Samsung Epix, but I'm still not sure.

Main uses (all over Wi-Fi):
Web Browsing
Apps
Texting / IM (prefer a keypad, but if you can make a convincing argument for a touch screen only, I'll consider)
Calls

Price range is no more than $200 with a contract or <350 unlocked (would sell a free phone from the new contract to cover part of the price)

I'm not really opposed to any particular OS, as anything is miles better than BREW on my RAZR2 right now.... ugh. Thanks for your help.


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I have the T-Mobile Wing Smartphone. I have a $29.95 business phone plan (T-mobile lets individuals get business plans). GSM network, syncs great with my Google Apps account and dirt cheap plan. I've been very happy with it. I use it for email, IMing, Texting, and phone calls. I'm fine with Win mobile because I don't do much if any web browsing.

**Edit**

With T-mobile to get all the reabates you have to get a data plan to get the full rebates. You can cancel it after 30 days without any penalty.
 
I work for Best Buy Mobile, and I handle Sprint, Verizon and AT&T at my location.

The IPhone REQUIRES a $30 or 45/mo data plan. AT&T Stopped letting us activating it w/o the data plan early 2009 (exceptions were able to be made before then, since no.)
The Blackberry Curve on AT&T does NOT automatically attach itself to a data plan, whereas Verizon it defaults to a $44.99 data package which can be knocked down to $29.99 over the phone only (Why they took it out of the activation system is beyond me), same with any BB on VZW. The BB's are currently the only phone on VZW that I stock that requires a data plan on it.

The Blackberrys on Sprint require a data plan, as does the Instinct, and Palm Pre. The Palm Pro does NOT require a data plan (running in WinMo).

I'd stay away from T-Mobile. I just took a drive with a friend of mine to NY (About 60 minute drive in all), and she dropped at Least 7 calls during this span. I've heard nothing but complaints out of T-Mo, and they JUST got themselves 3g. (Sprint is currently unraveling their 4g network in Baltimore, and expected in 12 more markets by the end of the year). I know next to nothing about T-Mo, other than they are the #1 carrier that people switch from in my store.
 
Verizon policy requires ANY smartphone or blackberry device to have a data plan. Period.

The closest you can come to a "smartphone" without data plan on their coverage is a Samsung Glyde or EnV Touch - which says it all imo.
 
The epix does not require a data plan, it is dirt cheap and has an amzing set of features, and has a nice touch screen, decent keyboard, and built in stylus. But there are a lot of problems and they seem to indiscriminately appear. I have about 5 friends with them plus mine, three just have the standard problems that can easily be fixed, ringtone volume etc, One worked fine until a month or so in it started to slow down ridiculously, but att gave him a brand new replacement, even though he had the phone for about 3 months. One had problems syncing to pc, but I blame the pc for that. My phone was refurbished, and I had shut down problems and I'm not sure whether the problem was the battery, google maps, or winmo.
If you decide to go epix check out
mysamsungepix.com for little tips on tweaking your phone
and spb mobile shell
 
UrinalCakeMIx said:
I work for Best Buy Mobile, and I handle Sprint, Verizon and AT&T at my location...I'd stay away from T-Mobile....I know next to nothing about T-Mo, other than they are the #1 carrier that people switch from in my store.
Click to expand...

The dropped calls are all a matter of location. At my sister's house in LA she has sprint and drops more calls on that phone than when she had a t-mobile phone.

If you don't sell t-mobile I wouldn't think it'd be too big of a surprise if most of the customers you have who are switching are switching away...they can hardly come to you to upgrade.

Sprint may be rolling out 4g and T-mobile may just be adding 3g but I'd sacrifice some data speed for good customer service any day (which sprint is just finally starting to be able to sorta deliver), especially since in this case data speed is irrelevant since there isn't going to be a data plan.

As far as what phone to get pretty much I'd suggest one of two things even if you can get a phone without a data plan (IE you can activate it) keep in mind a lot of times discounts will be tied to signing up for a data plan at the POS. Depending on what you are wanting to spend honestly you might be better off just buying, the smartphone at least, without the subsidy so that regardless you have more control...if you never activate the phone they can't force you to buy anything. I know AT&T has it where you can just get a sim card and throw it in a GSM phone...I believe T-mobile has the same thing, though I don't know how that works.

Rather than picking based on a phone (especially since you say you want GSM) I'd pick based on cell tower coverage. Something else to keep in mind with t-mobile is there are phones (I don't know if any of the smart phones do it...but I know there are some regular phones that do) that you can get connected to wi-fi and use the wi-fi signal as tower signal...so even if you might be in a place with less than stellar coverage you can still get good coverage if you have wi-fi. BUT...if you are going to just use wi-fi...whatever phone you pick it won't matter, except possibly trying to get it unlocked, since you won't be using the data service anyway.

Just an FYI I've been with T-mobile for going on 9 years now and in that time I can easily count on one hand the number of calls I've dropped. As I said earlier though...that is just a matter of tower coverage...every place is a bit different.
 
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