Yay 18!

Yep, I'm officially an adult...

Now, back to the news...

Boost Mobile Intros i290

Along with an unlimited plan, Boost introduced a new phone today, albeit a basic one. The price: $40. The features: text, web, MMS, GPS, walkie talkie, color screen, phone calls and a slim profile. The name: i290. The brand: predictably, Motorola. The network: iDEN. Nothing to shout about, but for people looking for a less angular phone than the rather long-and-wide i425, this may be just the ticket. Then again, the i335 is even shorter and has a slightly larger feature portfolio.

Any way you look at it, Boost needs all the phone choice they can get. The spec page for the i290 is here, by the way.

Forums Down

Sorry for the inconvenience, folks. There seems to be a problem with ZetaBoards (the platfrm on which the Go4Prepaid forums are hosted), and our forums have fallen victim to said problem. I'll updatehere when the forum is up. At any rate, comment here if ya wanna talk.

UPDATE: Five hours later, we're up. Not too horrible. Business as usual, I suppose :)

Motorola em326g on Net10...it snaps, it slides, it plays music!

Again thanks to the forums, specifically The Sweeper, I got a tip about a new phone coming down the pike to Net10 (and maybe Tracfone?). This is the biggest thing to happen to Net10 since the introduction of the camera-toting, web-enabled Motorola c261. Slightly bigger than the introduction of the Bluetooth-equipped Motorola w376g.

Theough the Boy Genius Report pooh-poohs the phone, we prepaid peeps know better; this will be the first Net10 phone with a

• Slider formfactor
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• Focus on music
• MP3 player
• MicroSD slot
• Full-sized headphone jack

It's also nice to see that Tracfone isn't totally ditching Motorola for their higher-end phones, in favor of LG. I'd guess the pricing of this phone would be around $100. Nice price for a nice phone on a nice network with a nice plan...with no contract required. If the phone comes out with a decent-ish price I'll probably pick it up for personal use; I don't want to take my super-expensive PDA phone everywhere.

Virgin Mobile Ups Text Pricing...Again...

Thanks to the folks over at the forums, I've been made aware that Virgin Mobile will soon up text message prices, for a la carte usage, by another five cents apiece. Granted, this is actually a little behind the rest of the wireless industry, who has already jacked message prices up to 15 or even 20 cents per message, but it's a sad thing to see, for people who just want to text once in awhile and not break the bank for that feature.

Granted, you can get a $2-for-30-messages-per-month pack from Virgin Mobile for light texters, which is nice. Still, considering the audience, this is sad but expected.

If you're currently on Virgin Mobile and have a la carte texts, you may well be "grandfathered in" under the new rate structure, keeping your texts at 10 cents per message. Similar happenings have been observed with the switch from 5 cent to 10 cent messages, from the old 25/10 pricing scheme, and from Virgin Mobile's 18-cent to their 20-cent "pay as you go" minute pricing. Then again, things may change for the worse here as far as keeping your old texting rate are concerned.

Kajeet Offers $70 Plan/Phone Rebate

As pointed out by forum member offthegrid here, Kajeet is offering a $70 rebate to anyone who buys a phone in the next few days, activates it before the month is half gone, and sticks to their $20, 150-minute-per-month plan for three months. Net effect? Either three months of free service and $10 off your phone, or $70 off your phone with a three-month contract, depending on hw you look at it.

If you're calling it a $70 phone rebate, that takes the LG Rumors down to $100, the Sanyo Katana II's down to $30, the original Katana and Samsung m300 down to $0, and the refurbished phones of various types (as well as the LG LX160) down to better-than-free.

Pretty good deal if you want a Kajeet phone.

More Cell phone Deal Info

Click the title of this post. The result: a Digg-like site where the latest prepaid cell phone deals are aggregated. Nothing to do with Go4Prepaid, but it does provide a nice, quick look at the latest prepaid phone deals...though it appears to be an incomplete list. I'd say it's a perfect complement to the forums.

Again, check it out here.