The USA is changing on phones. The old model of the phone company
selling you the phone at a subsidized price in exchange for a two year
contract with a stiff early cancellation fee is changing to what has
long been common in Europe and Asia in that you buy the phone and the
service separately. The phone is now unlocked and with a pre paid plan,
if you don't like the service or the prices, all that you have to do is
to buy a sim card from another company and put it in the phone.
In the Philippines, it looked like that store that sold me the phone
wasn't allowed to sell sim cards, he directed me to a convenience store
nearby.
This does create portability issues on the phone number and, if you let
the balance on the sim card go to zero for very long, the phone company
gives the number to somebody else. So you might need to take that into
consideration if you use your phone for business. I know at least one
lawyer who works out of his home and has advertised his cell phone
number as his business phone. He might see all of the calls from his
advertising go to some little old lady across town if he forgets to
reload the card.
When I priced shopped for my wife, h2o wireless was the cheapest, but
you might have trouble moving your phone number. The cheap companies
buy their connections from the big boys (Tracfone uses AT and T
connections and Virgin Mobile was using Sprint connections so the
quality of the calls will be the same. However the customer service
will probably becoming from Mexico, The Philippines or India and the
service rep will have no ability to make adjustments without about ten
supervisors giving the okay. He is learning to shave on your beard.
The attached youtube will give you an idea what you are up against with
cheap phone companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKqxJ6Z8tyI
Mark
On 03/30/2015 10:45 AM, James E. LaBarre wrote:
On 03/23/2015 11:29 AM, Mike Kershaw wrote:
On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 08:09:04PM -0400, James E. LaBarre wrote:
Looking for suggestions on a cheap, pocket-sized (4" screen?) Android
"tablet". Not ready to go to a "smartphone" yet, as I don't feel like
getting reamed on a data plan I'd never use anyway.
You should be able to use any android phone without a data plan (or a
sim).
There aren't any 'small tablets' anymore, so just pick an off-contract
phone in your price range - a nexus 4 for instance might be a good
bet.
Do a little research on models that grab your eye and see how they are
received - remember, buying the cheapest bottom of the barrel device
usually gives you... the cheapest bottom of the barrel device. The
low-end android experience can be truly awful.
So as an update; I figured I'd experiment with a basic pre-pay phone,
but just not activating it on the service. So I picked up Net10's LG
L34C on sale ($25 since it was already on sale, and I had a Staples
reward coupon I needed to use before it expired). Yes, it is the
"bottom of the barrel" as you said, but I already have a Galaxy Tab 4
to do the "heavy lifting", so this was more for portability while
being cheap enough that I wouldn't mind much if I bricked it.
Certainly a lot more useful as a PalmOS-like tool than the 10" tablet.
Yes, I expect if I ever end up with a "smartphone" on my VZW account
I'll probably use that instead. But this is a cheap enough testbed,
and I'd like to see just how readily it can be made to work for
non-cloud sources (the way PalmOS used to work, but that's a whole
different thread).
_______________________________________________
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Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College *
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--
Robert Mark Wallace
60 Delaware Road
Newburgh, NY 12550-3802
Telephone: (845)787-2364
Cell:(845) 541-7396
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
https://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College *
Apr 1 - Breaking Down The Barrier: Demystifying Contributing To Rails
May 6 - Docker: An Open Platform For Distributed Applications For Developers
And Sysadmins
