Friday, October 26, 2007

Prepaid Sweepstakes!

Sorry, but I've been extremely busy lately. Anyhow the folks at prepaidwireless.com are giving away a ton of stuff, from airtime coupons to refills to iPhones to a big bag of money :). Full disclosure: I do work for them, but hey...this is a sweet deal, with no purchase required so why not? The site is:

www.prepaidsweepstakes.com.

Sorry about the LG 200c review. I'll get that up sometime in the near future...

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A Frew Tracfone\Net10 and Virgin Mobile Updates

Sorry for not being here much anymore. I'm incredibly busy (should be doing homework\housework right n0w) at a hard school and am holding basically a CEO position at www.freeit4less.com. Lots on my plate.

Cool aside: right now my outside-window view (minus the parking lot) is like one of those snow-shaker bubble things. Finally, confirmation that I'm in Colorado :)

Anyhow, a few quick updates before I get back to work:

Tracfone

Looks like the Twofer deals have been replaced by 120-minute card and Double-for-Life deals, with the latter being randomly included in phones and the former being similar to what was happening before with twofer deals, except 50% more expensive...

On the CDMA side, you have three deals: the Kyocera K126C (new, who know...*sarcastic smiley*) with the 120-minute card, the LG 200c with the standard 1-year card and the LG 3280 with the 1-year double-minute card. The crazy thing is that all three phones look to be new...Tracfone isn't using this as a way to offload refurbished phones...yet...

On GSM, both the LG 225 and the Motorola c139 (!) are now available with double minutes for life (I don't think it's a card though) at no extra charge! Not that they're terribly great phones, byt the Motorola c139 is $15 with a $50-value card loaded onto the phone! Also, the Motorola v176 comes free with a 1-year card and the Motorola c261 with a 1-year double-minutes card. Both appear to be refurbished.

Additionally, for places that don't have AT&T service, the 1-year deal includes either a Motorola c155 or a c139, the double-minute 1-year deal includes a Motorola v170, and there is a 120-minute card deal...which includes the Motorola v170.

Virgin Mobile

There have been a lot of things coming out with Virgin Mobile...

First off, the Marbl (down to $20) is now available in purple and sky blue in addition to black. Yay novelty...just wish that the Marbl was a faster phone. Similarly the Super Slice is now available in an all-red model (limited edition already!?!).

Second, the Wild_Card aka Kyocera M1000 is out in stores and will be online on the 24th. Seems to be a decent phone, especially for texting...

...which sadly looks to be going up to 10 cents per message either way in the very near future, with a slightly more expensive cheap-per-month plan that'll give you 6-cent texts as opposed to the current 4-cent-per-text plan. The higher-end text plans will remain unchanged, and a new $20-a-month unlimited plan will be intro'd in a day or two from now.

Aside from various deals, that's about it for Virgin Mobile...

Net10

Two quick things: the Motorola w375 (yes, the cameraphone version of the w370) is already available in stores and will soon be available online, for $80. Not too bad for a full-featured Net10 handset. The LG c1500 is now available on Net10's website, for $60.

Well, that's about it. Thanks for bearing with me...now back to homework and other such drudgery.

Monday, October 15, 2007

LG 200c, WildCard, Net10 CDMA and more

Sorry I haven't posted much and as it stands this'll be a short post. I'm now running www.freeit4less.com and it's a tough business :). Plus school...

Anyhow, I grabbed the Net10 LG 200c for $60 today (as opposed to Tracfone's $30). Yes, Net10 now has CDMA phones in-store. So you can skip the daily fees of INPulse and get 10 cent minutes on a coverage area that's pretty near rock solid.

I'll be posting a quick review of the 200c up soon, however for now let's just say that it's a downgraded refresh of the LG 3280. It's a very solid phone, however it is missing a few 3280-specific features so you can see why it's priced at $30 instead of $50. But for basic users (Tracfone's audience, remember?) it's a slight bump up from the 3280. Again, I'll be talking more on this later.

About the WildCard, it is out at retail though not at Virgin Mobile's own website. Seems to be a decent phone (for a change considering it is made by Kyocera). I hope to get a hold of one for a quick review as well.

Speaking of Virgin Mobile, woe is the cellular industry; everyone is raising texting rates and it looks like Virgin Mobile is gonna follow suit, with an increase to 10 cents per text effective soon. There will be a 6-cent-per-text bundle pack and a new unlimited $20-a-month messaging pack (cool! reminds me of contract plans!) however I'm really sad to see the carriers nickel-and-diming (or in this case diming, in other cases really nickel-and-diming, in other cases dime-and-diming!) people to death on the occasional text. Someone needs to invent some other means of amazing cellular communication soon so the carriers will make texting chap again and start overcharging for a feature that is a bit less integral to the avid cellular user's daily life!

Though at least those of us\you who are on Tracfone and especially Net10 are safe; no bundles means that Net10 will now be the cheapest per text of anyone, at a mere 5 cents apiece, on Verizon and Cingular no less! Good deal, them thar on-phone airtime decreenters, though I'm sure Tracfone will find an insidious way to trick us out of our cheap texts when the time has come ;).

Well, off to other things now. Just letting everyone kow that I'm alive and at least partly well :). And that I go for prepaid (pun intended) more than ever now...I'm sticking a T-Mobile To Go SIM chip in my newly-unlocked, two-day-old iPhone and using the phone on my college WiFi network for the ultimate in both amazing experience and pay-as-you-go bliss!