If you are a heavy cell phone user, this might not be the thread for you. I personally use about 150 minutes a month, a few texts here and there, and maybe bring up a map occasionally if I'm on a trip, so here is what I'm thinking:
Right now, if you have a first-gen iPhone (as I do), the cheapest you can do is $69.51 after taxes, or $834.12 a year. My contract is coming up soon (November actually, but I might buy it out) and I've been doing a little investigating on what pay options are. For years I just used a Virgin Mobile Pay as you go phone for $0.25 a minute and hardly ever spent more than $20-30 a month, so that is what I'm looking at doing here.
I found out you can easily covert an iPhone to a GoPhone using the similar $0.25 a minute charge (or $1/day used + $0.10 a minute). Add to that Skype Out at $0.02 a minute, and we're starting to see things taking shape. So here is my plan:
Proposed setup
-Convert to Pay as you go (GoPhone) - I confirmed it includes Visual Voicemail
-Add a $100 GoPhone card, which expires in 365 days (400 minutes)
-Add $10 of Skype Out credit (500 minutes )for when I'm by a WiFi spot, which I usually am to make outbound calls cheaper atthose times
-Use Textfree lite for a free 15 texts per day ($5.99 for unlimited texts forever) - free inbound texts if I get my one buddy I text with to use it, otherwise it's $0.20 for inbound texts) (on second thought, that might go against data usage, so I have to check on the cost there(
What is lost/limited
-Essentially, non-WiFi data access. normal charges are $0.01/kb (which is rape) or you can by 30 day bundles at $5/MB or $20 for 100MB.
Right now, if you have a first-gen iPhone (as I do), the cheapest you can do is $69.51 after taxes, or $834.12 a year. My contract is coming up soon (November actually, but I might buy it out) and I've been doing a little investigating on what pay options are. For years I just used a Virgin Mobile Pay as you go phone for $0.25 a minute and hardly ever spent more than $20-30 a month, so that is what I'm looking at doing here.
I found out you can easily covert an iPhone to a GoPhone using the similar $0.25 a minute charge (or $1/day used + $0.10 a minute). Add to that Skype Out at $0.02 a minute, and we're starting to see things taking shape. So here is my plan:
Proposed setup
-Convert to Pay as you go (GoPhone) - I confirmed it includes Visual Voicemail
-Add a $100 GoPhone card, which expires in 365 days (400 minutes)
-Add $10 of Skype Out credit (500 minutes )for when I'm by a WiFi spot, which I usually am to make outbound calls cheaper atthose times
-Use Textfree lite for a free 15 texts per day ($5.99 for unlimited texts forever) - free inbound texts if I get my one buddy I text with to use it, otherwise it's $0.20 for inbound texts) (on second thought, that might go against data usage, so I have to check on the cost there(
What is lost/limited
-Essentially, non-WiFi data access. normal charges are $0.01/kb (which is rape) or you can by 30 day bundles at $5/MB or $20 for 100MB.
