Monday, July 18, 2005

High Tech Angst

Help me out?

My cell phone and cell plan are both more than two years old now. I am beginning to feel like I am paying for things my phone can't really do (or at least do well). The phone itself is still fairly sexy as far as form factor goes but things like internet and text messaging were not well implemented and that's beginning to bother me.

Today I looked at this phone online:


and this plan & provider:


Anyone out there got that phone? Or heard anything up or down? How about T-Mobile? Any insight? Buying phones & plans from Amazon? Any idea how to keep your number if you're changing providers and doing online?

I certainly have a lot of questions.

I've always thought this was sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of choice. Whatever you buy from whomever you buy it on some level you're always a little disappointed. I guess on balance over the years I've always been a little happier than not, but right now it might be time to move on.

Anyway. Anyone got any tips? I'd love to have them.

3 comments:

Peg said...

Is there any way you can keep your phone even if you switch plans? Phones seem disposable but they contain a metallic ore called coltan. Our cell phone addiction (my personal drug of choice is Nextel) does lots of not so good things. Better to keep the phone you have and use it on a new plan, particularly if you're not unhappy with the phone itself. http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/ has more info.

Katy said...

I don't recommend T-Mobile. I have used it in Minneapolis, New Haven, Pittsburgh, Chicago, NYC and driving between all those places. The only thing good about it is that my dad pays for it. The service tends to drop, its awful indoors, and you can't get existing-customer service in the stores, you have to do it all on the phone, which is a major yuck factor for me.

The only cell phone service in Pittsburgh that ever seemed worth the money to me was Verizon. The boys from New England got it bc the other companies didn't really serve Vermont and Maine 5 years ago, and they really do have the best reception/coverage. Also, you can get a Verizon hardware problem dealt with in-store, as well as plan changes and such.

Here at CSSI the Operations Manager recently did a bunch of research on cell phone service (we have 20+ Nextels) because our contract was coming up to be renewed.

Overall, Verizon and US Cellular had the best combination of service coverage, reception and customer service. AT&T/Cingular is the worst overall. T-Mobile and Nextel were in the middle somewhere. I think that when someone gets around to dealing with it, we're switching to Verizon now that they have push-to-talk (which the Traffic guys and Bob use a lot) as well as good regular cell service (which is what Proj. Management primarily uses) and sexy camera phones (which are the best thing EVER for on-site stuff, especially troubleshooting... I had a really good 2nd Lead on Forum) if Bob gets up off his wallet.

About the phone-trash problem... You can donate your old phone to social service-type agencies that give them to people in abusive relationship, and the phone companies donate the phone service. That's what my family does with old phones (we upgrade all at once on the family plan), although its also good to keep a spare handset around, that works with your current provider, just in case you are working on a barge in the river.

Anonymous said...

I just did the buy a phone/plan thing for my grandmother....

T-Mobile looked like it had acrappy coverage area....but I can't speak from experience with them

I've always had Verizon in PGH and its worked well for me. Also. another factor to consider is what service provider the people you talk to most have because a lot of places have the free calling to people within your provider now. Also, I think all the different service providers ask you if you want to keep your number when you are purchasing online. However, I'm not sure about amazon...

As far as phones go...I always just get the one that's free with the plan, so I can't offer a lot of insight- but something to keep in mind are the actual dimensions of the phone because I find that most phones are irritatingly small now - particularly for people with bad eyesight (ie my grandmother). Also, I'd stay away from Kyocera because I've had some fairly ridiculously bad experiences with my Kyocera phone.