Finally out of a phone lease

[94touring]

Cell phone providers have gotten as bad as cable providers over the years. I haven't paid for cable in years but that's a whole other topic.  My cell provider a couple years ago switched to this lease program, as opposed to just trading in your old phone and walking out with a new one. If I didn't need a smart phone for my job (to make my life easier) I'd be walking around with a flip phone.  So for the past 24 months I've been paying 20 bucks on a phone I don't own, which at the time wasn't a big deal as my bill stayed the same.  However now that my phone is 2 years old and my battery drains rather quick and my headset jack requires I use a rubber band to keep a good connection, well it's time to upgrade. Then I looked at the options. For $13 more than I currently pay, which is already outrageous, I can get a new phone. Ok and next upgrade time another 13 right, and then another and another till I'm paying 300 a month.  Nope.  So since my lease is over and this phone does everything I need I opted to buy the phone for 80 bucks (kinda robbery) and end the ripoff insurance plan of 13 a month.  A 33 month savings or nearly 50 if I upgraded the dumb phone.  Now back to the battery and jack problems.  Found an online tutorial and 30 bucks later have a new battery, jack, usb, and lower phone button thingy, plus tools to crack open the phone and fix the damn thing myself.  I will be driving this phone till the wheels fall off.  And when it finally blows an engine will buy older and refurbished online for a fraction of the cost and not get raped by the phone company. 

[Willie_B]

Great job. One of the reasons I use Straight Talk with a purchased phone. May not be the latest and greatest but it does what I want a reasonable monthly flat rate.

[94touring]

Yeah makes phone calls!  Lol.  I could buy a nice work truck for what I've been paying monthly on phones. 

[gr8kornholio]

Agreed, I'd love to just have a phone.  Wireless carriers are definitely as bad as cable.  Every year I get close to cutting the cord and now I see sports are getting accessible by non cable means.  Think their time is ticking.

[94touring]

I pay 12 bucks a month for the high def version of Netflix. Paid 9 bucks for years but bought a 65 inch monster tv for the new house and splurged on the high def option...4k or whatever it's called.  There's only infinite shows and crap to watch anytime you want.  I like their documentary selection and have some good standup if you look hard enough. The movie selections can be minimal at times if you want something specific.  Jen and I rent off Amazon movies when we want something specific, at 3 to 5 bucks a pop. We do that maybe once or twice a month.  So for under $20 I have unlimited junk to watch.  We each have our own shows we subscribe to but currently going through Cheers together and next is Frazier.  About a years worth right there for us.  Hell I watched breaking bad 3 times.  Best part for me is you can download certain things from netflix now. So when I commute to and from work I have hours of things to watch to kill the time.  Or pay $100+ a month for cable and not watch 99% of it.  Our dues at the condo include internet.  Only use my data at the shop to stream music from my phone.

[MiniDave]

I use my phone so little.......

I had a really inexpensive flip phone and paid $15 mo (pay as you go) for 150 minutes that rolled over if I didn't use them.....after a couple of years I had over 3000 minutes!

Rose buys phones really cheap, but we use WinPhones so maybe they are cheap? She buys top of the line Nokia's for nothing - like $60 - that run the latest Win 10 software.......and we pay about $60 mo for both on our AT&T plan.......but I don't stream movies and such on the phone.

Getting rid of our landline at $50/mo almost paid for the cell plan, and we kept our home number that we'd had for 30+ years as Rose's number.

[Jims5543]

I run my business off my phone.

Any expense it may incur is greatly offset by my ability to generate revenue due to it.


I never even think twice about what it costs me.

Dan, I am surprised the airlines does not supply you with a phone.

[94touring]

The airline supplies us with iPads and if I were on the union they'd pay for my phone.  That's not a job I want.  Now I could not use my phone at work, but that would mean taxiing back to the gate to use the phone every time I have something break.  No way I'm doing that.

My data plan and unlimited everything is 75 a month, which is fine because I use it so much. 45 with Jen added on.  We text a million times a month.  Tack on taxes and fees plus her more expensive iphone and insurance and you have a steep bill.

[Jims5543]

All my phones on my plan, five of them, I supply all my employees, because I am awesome, runs me around $400 a month last time I looked.

Those phones pay for themselves many times over every month.

As I said, even at $500 a month I would be fine with them, they make me money they are tools I need.

[94touring]

My first cell was provided by the engineering company I worked for as a surveyor. Back when no one even had cell phones.  We had a truck phone when I first started.  Had no idea how great I had it!

[94touring]

More good news!  Went back online and looked at phone plans.  Back when I put Jen on it was to save a buck. Instead we saved nothing.  Well the latest everything plan is 20 bucks less than what I've been paying!  So after a brief chat am saving another 20.  Finally feels like a real deal.

[Bahowe1]

So, I've been using PagePlus now for a few years and am a huge fan.  For anyone that doesn't know, it runs on the Verizon network and you bring your own phone.  Since basically everywhere has WiFi now, I don't need so much data, so my plan is 29.95 every month.  No more taxes, no more fees, no contracts.  29.95, and I buy a used phone when I need a new one.  1500 talk minutes (Who talks on a phone?...) unlimited text, and 1 GB data.  I've never run out of anything if I use WiFi when available.
Like I said, it's on Verizon network so I have never had trouble with coverage.  The part I don't know is international travel.  My company policy basically requires you to take a work phone for international travel, so I don't really know what happens with pageplus.  I don't think Pageplus has a provision to turn on an option for international travel.  That's about the only downside I have ever found.  Hope it helps someone else out. 

[MiniDave]

The bride and I bought new cell phones - years ago when she decided she wanted a smart phone we went and looked at what was available then - iPhones (we have nothing i in the house) Androids and Windows. She looked at them and found the Win operating system the easiest to adapt to since it was practically the same as our laptops. Since then she's become our tech support as she really took to it - started doing beta testing for Win and so on.

Now Microsoft no longer supports the op sys at all, only sending out the occasional security update - and after the last one the phones quit working - they don't ring when we get a call, just go straight to voicemail and she could not figure out how to get them to work correctly again. As they were 4-5 years old we decided to replace them, and again had to make the same choice - iPhone or Android. We chose Android, as it's all Google based stuff, works with Google and will be supported for at least three years. By then we'll be using a Jitterbug cause we'll be too old to figure out how to use a regular phone!  77.gif

What we bought is the OnePlus 7 Pro, it was fairly spendy but we decided just this one time to get a top of the line phone, it's the same width as our old Win Nokias, but about a half inch taller, very sleek and cool looking, came with it's own protective case for the back too.

It's supposed to have a killer camera in it, so I have a steep learning curve ahead of me.....

It uses the Snapdragon 855 processor, has 8 gig of ram and 256GB of ROM and the display is 6.67" with a "Fluid AMOLED display", whatever the hell that is. It runs Android 9, or the Oxygen OS. My computer doesn't have that much storage! Well, not as much ram anyway....

So far, my main impression is that it is FAST! Opens emails instantly, in fact everything works instantly, even YouTube vids. Just for fun I watched the latest Project Binky and both the pic and sound were pretty amazing. I haven't learned how to do everything so far, and I had a difficult time transferring my contacts, but it's all set up now and I just have to get used to it. The bride has already joined a OnePlus forum and has spent plenty of time getting hers set up just the way she likes it. She loves techy things like this so I'm happy to get her something she can sink her teeth into.

Oh, and we haven't jumped yet, but T-Mobile has a great plan for us oldsters, $70/mo all in for two lines with unlimited talk, text and data. She's worried about coverage compared to AT&T, plus we're grandfathered in on a pretty good plan now with them, but I think we'll probably change at some point as it will save us $300 a year.

[MiniDave]

Phone update: so far, so good!

Rose managed to get us integrated with our wifi, our computers, even the damn TV!  Another benefit - it syncs up with the Wyze cameras we bought to keep an eye on the boys, so - bonus!

The camera is pretty sharp based on the pics I've messaged to others - at least when you blow them up on a computer - on the phone they're just as good as any others, depending on the quality of your phone. The battery lasts pretty well under my use, about 2 days - my poor old Win phone was down to about 5 hours before it shut itself off with a dead battery, so I'm happy with that. Text, email, phone and other functions I use a lot seem pretty easy to do, about like the Win phone in operation so not too bad a learning curve. Overall I think it's going to work out fine.....at $700 it was less than the latest iPhone, but still a damn lot of money - twice as much as I paid for my laptop 5 years ago!

But considering how we use our phones for pretty much everything today I thought it was worthwhile to upgrade to something a little more future oriented.

[94touring]

I think I will finally be upgrading my phone.  My screen is starting to go purple in the corner and slowly spreading like cancer.  Since it's over 4 years old and I've rebuilt it once, time for new.

[MiniDave]

Are you on iPhone or Android? What do you think you'll get?

[94touring]

I'm an android guy.  I'm leaning toward the S9+ vs the S10 that just came out.  Saves about 500 bucks.  I currently use an S6.

[94touring]

Day 3 of the s9 plus.  I like it.  A few extra features but nothing too crazy where a big learning curve required.  It is definitely faster in all areas vs the  s6 I had been using for the past 4 years.  It's bigger but not obnoxious to where it doesn't fit in my pocket.  Found a slim fitting case thats low profile  and added a screen protector for when I accidentally shoot metal shavings on it at the shop.  Also the battery life is substantially better.  The plus version had an extra 500 mh of battery juice.

[MiniDave]

We've had these for about three weeks now and as expected Rose is far more into the workings of the Android system than I am. I can take photos and upload them to the computer, answer calls and text - I'm a happy camper!