TDMA Phones

Most of us know that Beyond Wireless is cutting off TDMA activations on the 31st of this month. So those of us who want their prized service have precious little time to get it. But what phone do you want? First of all, you'll need a phone that's either AT&T or not SOC-locked (US Cellualr TDMA works fine, as do most phones that say Digital on them or have no branding). You may also be able to use Cingular TDMA phones. Second, here's a guide to what phones are how good, for the phones most on the market (I'm not going to talk about eh old extendable-antenna Nokias that weighted half a pound)...

NOKIA

I'm pretty sure these guys made the most TDMA phones. Made is the usual verb here, as TDMA phone production has, as far as I know, ceased. They also made the most feature-rich TDMA phone, though, as is the typical Nokia style until about 2005, it's a bar phone.

5165 - This is possibly the most "out there" TDMA phone. It has all the functionality (voice and text) that Beyond Wireless TDMA allows and reception is good. If you don't mind a small yellow-backlit screen and a bricklike from factor (as in near-unpocketably large) you should be very happy with this very cheap ($5-$10 is the usual price) phone, which has scads of accessories available.

5160 - If you just talk this phone is fine. It's the older brother to the 5165 and sports a boxier faceplate (for best looks change with a 5165 faceplate) and a lack of outgoing text messaging. I reccommend this less especially since it's a little rarer and probably is just as expensive as the 5165.

5125 - This is the dual-band cousin of the 5165. It should work just as well since most 1900 band coverage on TDMA is supplemented by reception on the 850 band or is dead already. But it is rarer I think so probably not a great deal.

5120 - This is the dual-band version of the 5160. Read the comments on the 5160, than the differences between the 5165 and the 5125 and that's about what this phone is.

1260\1261 - If you want modern and basic, this is it. It has a pretty large black-and-white screen and I think a calculator and works pretty well overall, though not excpetionally well. I'd pass this up though unless you can get it for less than maybe $15 as phones that are a good bit better aren't much more expensive. Also this is not a terribly well-known phone so it may be a little more expensive that way.

1220 - Again, the dual-band cousin of its xx60 model. Haven't seen any though.

2260 - If you want a refreshing blue backlight and vibrating alert with once again a more modern phone, here you go. Beware though that it's pretty expensive and reception has been termed less than great. I'd personally pass this up for (once again) a better-featured model.

3560 - One of the four color TDMA phones, this is the older brother to the Nokia 6010\3595 still seen today on GSM networks. As such you can expect modern features, though some things, due to the nature of the TDMA network (such as web access) just aren't there. You can probably find this phone for below $40. I got mine (now traded) for $21.99 shipped. I heartily reccommend this phone if voice and text are your thing and you live in an area covered by the TDMA network. Talk is nice and cheap with Beyond so I'd say consider this phone if that's most of what you'll be doing even with CDMA and GSM carriers as options. Oh, and you can trade faceplates with a 6010 or 3595 for a look near-indistinguishable from a nice modern phone.

6560 - This is the Ferrari of TDMA phones. It's small, light, and can do everything TDMA can't as of now (TDMA could do web once; this could too). It's priced pretty high (as much as $90 and usually around $60-$70) but if TDMA is your thing nobody will know you have a TDMA phone with this as your Nokia of choice.

3360\3361 - These aren't particularly pretty or advanced or any such thing, but they once again do the job of making and receiving phone calls and text messages well. They're cheap too ($20 I think is the usual).

6360 - If you don't need a color screen and want advanced features welcome to TDMA's version of heaven. This longish but thin handset has infrared and plenty of other nice features, though I don't think web is one of them (you couldn't use it anyway). But as a warning this phone tends to get expensive ($40-$50 the last time I looked).

6160/7160 - These phones are similar in that they're pretty advanced but also pretty old, on the level of a souped up Nokia 5165. The 7160 has a slider form factor. The 6160 is a brick. I almost forgot to talk about these since they're prety rare.

I guess that's it for Nokia. Now to

MOTOROLA

These guys didn't make as many TDMA phones, but here they are:

v120 - This phone, which is poor in its CDMA incarnation, has been surprisingly well-reviewed for TDMA. If you want a $30 card on Beyond Wireless and will pay $6.95 for shipping, you can just by this phone flat out and easy.

v60 - Sure it's one of the two TDMA flips, but it's as bad on TDMA as the v120 is on CDMA. I'd make this a phone to pass up, in favor of...

v60 color - This is a phone that's pretty good at doing phone calls and text messages and has the distinction of being the only TDMA color flip. It's not that expensive either, at maybe $50.

c353 - This is the fourth color phone on TDMA and arguably the most basic. It has a $60 CDMA counterpart on TracFone but you should be able to get it for maybe $40 on eBay. It's an OK phone but keep in mind that it may not have the modern interface of the Tracfone version, and if it does it will have the same wierd shorcomings discussed two posts ago.

c343 - Take the c353 and give it a black-and-white screen. I think it's a little cheaper. If ou want a nice-looking prety darn basic TDMA phone here's your chance, though I'd go for the c353 or better a Nokia model.

StarTAC - Do you want to be retro? If the answer is yes welcome to the TDMA ersion of this phone. I think it's only dual-band but if you want retro and a pretty good phone to boot here it is. Just don't think too cheap.

Now for

PANASONIC

I don't know much about these phones but they're basically the same except that some have speakerphones or ruggedized chassis while others don't. Battery life is generally not too great, but the phones aren't too bad and tbey are customizeable in such wierd ways as backlight color. The DuraMax is the durable phone (hence the name), the ProMax has a speakerphone, the Allure may also have the speakerphone and then there's one more model whose name slips my mind right now...thay're all not too expensive but not too plentiful either.

SONY\ERICSSON

These guys generally made some good TDMA phones, though there aren't a whole bunch of them and the interface is certainly different than usual. Some of these phones have small (heightwise) screens so kep that in mind while looking around in this area. One notable phone is the T60LX or T60D (not to be confused witht he rotten T62u GAIT phone) which has plenty of nice features (though no color screen or infrared) and an interesting "egg" shape. Not too expensive either...

MITSUBISHI

One of the least-known phone manufacturers, these guys made good, though very, very few, phones. You'll probably have to look for a long while to find one.

With that ends my somewhat in-depth look at TDMA phones. I'll probably post eBay closed auction prices later but hope this helped people who want to go Beyond.

GoPhone: Go For It!

Right now Cingular is offering two phones, one of which comes in two varieties. The Nokia 6010, the old stanby of GSM that is a great basic phone, if basic can be termed to a phone capable of web access, MMS, text messaging and voice calls (probably can), is $30. Surprise, so is the Samsung c207, a phone more likely to stay on Cingular (not as easily unlockable) but small and neat enough that you might just have to get the cable and unlock it for T-Mobile as well.

If you want the c207 you have two choices: buy it new for $30 or buy it refirbished for $30. What's the difference? The new one had a $30 mail-in rebate that you need to redeem to get that price. The Nokia is new.

Nice thing about all GoPhones is that if you go to DealKing (I think DealKing.com) and follow the directions somewhere there you can get $30 back from them for getting a GoPhone, or that's the last I heard. So you can give it a try and if it works you've just become the proud owner of a free prepaid phone, a comcept pioneered by STi Mobile ;).

Of Shorties and Tracfones

First, the Nokia Shorty is now back up to $29.98 at my local Wal-Mart, upping it back into ripoff status. I would've posted a photo of it Saturday morning when I was in the store but STi's picture messaging is strangely defunt of late. Watch this phone not sell ;). Amazon has it for a penny more...until you figure out they don't charge tax or shipping and Wal-Mart does charge tax :). I'd go for the Tracfone 2126 right now since it's $10 cheaper and in color.

And about Tracfone, as it turns out if you have those lovely promo code booklets you can still use them with the new beefed-up airtime rates. I know this because some people walked up at Wal-Mart wanting to add airtime to their Motorola c353 (more on that later) or is it c343 (can't remember). Anyway, without a promo code (added airtime over the phone and the prompt didn't let me do another promo code after the first failed; didn't get there fast enough) there were 250 minutes added to the phone. One of those famously huge codes (there were three of 'em) that I typed into the phone enabled that nice little feature called Rapid Refill so that time I was able to put in the promo code easily (for 30 minutes) and tada we had 280 more minutes. Not bad for $50 plus tax (about 19.1 cents a minute all told).

Now about the Motorola c3?3, it's that $60 phone that few people buy. I actually found it to be relatively useable though it has the flaw of REVERSED SEND AND END KEYS AAAAAAAH!!!! Anyway besides that and a slightly wierd menu scheme the phone was very useable and seemed to hold a signal well. It seemed to have the exact same screen (and a similar menu layout) as the Motorola v170 GSM Tracfone flip (now seen with cingular branding as well) which means it had a screen medium-sized for a bar phone (slightly larger and higher-resolution than the Nokia 2126's but the 2126 makes better use of the screen) but abysmally small for a flip (I mean wouldn't you expect a larger screen on a flip phone...come on). Enough with the screen and menu system ranting: the phone seemed a bit cheap but certainly useable, a feeling you get with the v170 except to a lesser extent, mostly because the buttons aren't placed or responding ultra-correctly relative to the surface of the phone.

Anyway, not on to Rapid Refill. For the few, the proud, the people who have it turned on in their local areas (some zips seem to have it, some do not) and have a modern enough phone (anything from the Nokia 1100 or 2285 on) welcome to, upon your next code-punching frenzy, something that makes adding airtime refreshingly easier: a menu option that lets you put the airtime code, with the promo code right after it, into the phone. You get the appropriate number of minutes a little later via a free text message. Genius...why so late Tracfone? Oh yeah, it's because the phone keeps track of airtime. ;)

Simple Freedom - Changing?

I've heard many things. First, it seems as though Alltel will be changing its Simple Freedom service into the super prepaid plan I mentioned a post or two ago. Second, I've heard that Simple Freedom is being pulled out of stores where the Verizon network is the network the phones are being activated on. Third, I've heard that the pull-out is just for rebranding and it will be released again.

I'm inclined toward the tird option. Simple Freedom's footprint is the same as the new prepaid plan's, and my store for one (I'm in a Verizon-only area, but Alltel isn't too far away) still has several Simple Freedom phones in stock. Granted, roaming is more expensive, but the large home area is just as much cheaper (actually more, 10 cents cheaper vs. 9 cents more expensive) so I'm not too sad. I'm rooting for Alltel...and yes I have more to say about my adventures in cellular land but that must wait...

Tracfone, Alltel Prepaid, Virgin Text

Well, a couple of things here.

As to Tracfone, they've dropped the super deal with the Motorola v170 and $50 card for the price of the card plus tax. They still have the Nokia 1100 deal (the one with the $20 card) as well as one with a $130 card and a new phone ratehr than a refurbished one (doesn't really make a difference as refurb units are excellent quality). As to their CDMA selection, it is still pitiful online, with only the Motorola v120 available (in a promotion similar to that of the Nokia 1100 on GSM). If anyone wants the Nokia 2126, I'll send 'em for $30 activated or unactivated but in either case rid of the large packaging, as my local Wal-Mart has them in stock.

Tracfone's TDMA selection is looking up however, though it is still ailing. They now offer the Motorola v60 flip, though just in areas that offer TDMA service only (zip 26121 is a way to get the phone). The new phone alone is $60 plus tax, though the promo code 80041 may take 15% off the price. The new phone with a double-minute card is $140 so if you can sell the double-minute card for $100 you have a reasonable priced flip phone. One small problem: the v60's TDMA version has been badly reviewed, as has the v120's CDMA version, though it will probably still work to some extent.

Now, about Virgin Mobile's SMS. I've been informed that as of March 15th the pricing will change from 10 cents to send\free to receive to 5 cents both ways, the same as STi. If you send more texts than you receive this is a turn for the better but if you use SMS search functions, most of which generate several results messages, or use an SMS alerts service, here's an advance warning to look elsewhere, to either Beyond Wireless or T-Mobile, depending on what is in your area.

And for the final topic: Alltel's upcoming prepaid plan. Scheduled to arrive on the 25th (and relying on information someone else posted so don't kill me if this doesn't happen as I want it to be as well :) ) is something similar to Virgin Mobile except better. First off, it uses the "Simple Freedom" combined Verizon\Alltel home network, which covers a lot of ground, as home territory, with roaming at a bearable 59 cents a minute. Second, the plans are competitive and the Most Called Number option leaves a nice loophole for a cheap long distance card. :) Text messaging, if not included in your plan, is five cents both ways, better than the previous 8 cents. One con: I don't know phone prices yet, but I do know that activation is $35, though that might get you a 99 cent phone.

The traditional perpaid option is 15 cents a minute. You refill with at least $10 and activate with at least $20 beyond the activation fee. The pay-by-day option lets you pick either nights\weekends, M2M (with other Alltel users), text messaging, or a single Most Called Number as unlimited for 75 cents a day for two, plus 25 cents a day per other service, so $1.25 for everything. Maybe a long-distance calling card would be a nice candidate for the Most Called Number; 10 cents a minute for calls not covered in one of your "free" categories is cheap for prepaid but still not as good as a normal calling card, which can be 2.5 cents a minute fairly easily (www.phoneshark.com is where I get mine). I might as well just copy the hybrid plan options:

***** Pay per month
• Customers must pay in advance for the monthly recurring charges for this rate plan type.
•$29.99 – 200 peak, 1,000 Night & Weekend minutes, $.35 post-package rate
•$39.99 – 400 peak, 2,000 Night & Weekend minutes, $.35 post-package rate
•$69.99 – 700 peak, Unlimited Night & Weekend minutes, Unlimited M2M, and Unlimited Text messaging, $.10 post-package rate
•M2M can’t be purchased for the $29.99 or the $39.99 plans
•The $29.99 or $39.99 plans also have the option of purchasing the $5.99 or $9.99 SMS packages.
•One Most Often Called (MOC) number can be purchased for $5 per month on any package plan. This number can be any landline or wireless number, anywhere in the US.

Is it just me or does that sound pretty good for prepaid? I hope it comes through.

Speaking of pretty good for prepaid, I'm also wondering whether there will be a 14-day free trial on the upcoming ReadyLink+Web bundle on STi. If there is, what a nice way to try out alternative means of walkie-talkie :)

Quick Announcements: Virgin. Boost & Beyond

On Virgin Mobile, the Audiovox V7 Flasher is now $80 direct from their site. If you are dying for a camera phone and don't want to deal with STi rebates and\or want to port your number in (invalidates the STi rebate I've heard, maybe I'm wrong though) here's something, though it's a pretty junky phone. The Audiovox 8610 is now $60...finally it's priced out of the insanity range.

On Boost, the "chirp change" $25 extra promo is until 1\31\06. Enjoy it while you can, then wait for some other promo; Boost phones are too expensive to come with only $10 in airtime IMO.

On Beyond, though the TDMA activation cutoff date is still 1\31\06, the rollout date for GSM is now in mid-February. I really don't want to see these guys die out, but with two weeks of no new activations it could happen...then again it may still be OK...but if they push GSM back again things are going to start getting iffy.

Side Comparison #2

Here is another size comparison, this time between the relatively small iDEN flip the i450 and the Virgin mobile Snapper. As you ben see, while the 450 is still large it not obnoxiously so like some other nextel phones. I will put another photo up soon.

i285 Info and More Stuff For Sale (trade actually)

First off, I found that the i285 seems to connect to the network a tad faster than my i415. Second, the i285 gets a bar or two better reception than my i415, picking up a signal maybe 100 yards, maybe even more than that, away from where my i415 dropped out in hilly country near my house, which gets a full signal dince it's about 100 yards from US 290. Interestingly, if I sat down on the road shoulder with my i285 it would lose a signal but standing it would get it.

Of course, the big con of the i285 is that its battery life is way, way below average, as in analog battery life. But when you consider that the reason is the battery is small because the whole phone is as close to a Motorola SLVR (for the uninitiated the bar version of the RAZR, coming soon) as iDEN is ever going to get, you can fogive it somewhat.

OK, now about the trade\sale part of this item. I want to drop a line of Boost service, as two lines at a minimum of $6.66 a month is a bit much. I also want the i450, basically the flip version of the i415 but with other improvements as well. So I'm willing to trade both my Boost phones (i415 and i285) for an i450, all three without sim cards inside. Or I'll trade my i415 with the i285 sim inside (since they're both 64k phones everything will work fine) for an i450 without a sim. If I do the two-phones-for-one trade I'll also want to sell my i285 sim (with around $20 on it and its expiration on April Fool's Day) for the amount on it plus $1 or so for shipping (snail mail) and PayPal fees (I'll take a check in the mail too).

I've posted this info on Howard Forums as well, here:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=815513

Motorola i285

I traded my Nokia 3560 on Beyond Wireless for a shiny little Boost i285. I'm thinking of making it my primary Boost phone. Though it has less features than my i415 is is much, much smaller, small enough to keep it from being immediately shown to be an iDEN phone, as they tend to be on the large side. As a size comparison, it is shorter and maybe a little thinner than my Nokia 6010 on T-Mobile To Go. If you want a candy bar phone this is about as candy-bar-ish as you're going to get :) with its rounded frame and stubby proportions.

OK, now for the bad stuff. First, the text messaging system is web-based, versus the i415's phone-based system. Ech. Not like I'd use Nextel's horrible text system anyway though. Second, the screen is small and pixelated, a result of the phone's being smaller and a little older. Both items are liveable though; the screen is no more pixelated than that of a Nokia 6010 or 2126, and has about the same screen area as the 6010. I'm just picky.

So if you're in the market for a smaller iDEN phone, the i285 is OK. A few warnings though: the battery life seems to suffer due to the size of the phone, so keep a charger at hand. Also, look for this phone used on eBay or something like that. Its smallness doesn't make it quite worth the $50 boostmobile.com is asking for it. Oh, and as with all other iDEN phones the ringtone selection outside of the monophonic bleeps is very slim.

And a few warnings about Boost service:

1. The i285 does not come with TeleNav. The program is $5 to download, plus the per-trip fees. The "unlimited usage" moniker is incorrect.

2. DO NOT download the "music" or "voice" ringtones. They are $3 and are about 10 seconds long. If you want to trick out your phone, either buy a data cable and put normal-sized ringtones on your phone or get an LG 225 on STi, which allows you to either download tones from 3gforfree or even record your own.

Well I guess that's it. By the way, anyone who is in the market for a Boost sim card contact me. I may want to sell the sim card that came with the i285 for a dollar or two plus the balance on it. I can't afford to have more than two or so expiration-based prepaids where there is basically a monthly minimum, unless it's really small.

Wait...It's Better!

I posted the first rendition of this from my STi phone. Now I'm goi g over with something better. Basically that cingular10 code seems to work EVERYWHERE on CheapPhoneCards.com! This means you can not only use it on Cingular refills, but also on such cards as those from T-Mobile To Go, Tracfone and STi. The added bonus is you can use the code on hardware (STi phones) and accessories as well. Payme25 gets better deals on most of the items sold, but as it doesn't work on the LG 225 cameraphone cingular10 is a worthy substitute, bringing the STi $149 package down to $140.05 shipped. Interestingly, this is only 23 cents cheaper than the price of my own 225, purchased with refill8, but I seem to remember some other wierd discount coming out of nowhere that helped me a bit...

Cingular Refills for even cheaper!

I found another coupon code for CheapPhoneCards: cingular10. As you might figure out from its contents, this code takes 10% off GoPhone refills, which are 5% off as it is. So you get around 15% off total. If you have GoPhone this is a good deal...

Size Comparison, Part I

This is a size comparison between my Boost i415 and a Nokia 5165. As you can see, both are not small phones by any stretch of the imagination.

Boost Mobile Experience or How I Joined the iDEN Occult or Happy New Year!

So I got $70 in BestBuy gift certificates. What better to spend them on than a Boost Mobile i415, then take the ad money from this blog that would have gone to getting the i415 and putting it toward an OCZ 1GB Rally USB drive (I had money in the bank so I went ahead and got the drive since I knew the ad money would be here in January, which was about half an hour from when I wrote this part of the post but almost there when I finished it about five minutes ago). I'm also getting, as a trade, a Boost i285, see my earlier posts.

The main things I got the phone for were. besides having a phone on the Nextel network, the Walkie Talkie and GPS features. In a minute I'll talk about both but just in case anybody was wondering why I got the phone. And yes, bunches of my relateives are on Nextel, though the ranks are thinning slightly in favor of such carriers as MetroPCS.

Anyway, the first thing different about iDEN phones in general is that they are larger than comparable non-iDEN phones, with the flips being more noticeably larger than the difference between bar phones. So my i415 is actually only a little smaller than a Nokia 5165. THe other thing differet in a bad way is battery life: take a phone on analog and put an extended battery on it and you get the 75 hours of standby and 165 minutes of talk time that is pretty common to iDEN phones. Also, netowrk outages seem more frequent than on other carriers; the Saturday, Sunday and Monday following the day I got and activated my phone were days of a cellular (though not data or walkie talkie) outage for I think all of Texas.

OK. Now for the good part, but the good part is mixed in with some bad. The first thing is walkie-talkie, which normally connects in less than a second and after the inital connect is near-instant as far as connection speed goes, though it takes about half a second for the conversation to reach the other end. But this speed is consistent whether you're calling close or from Texas to Florida or even New England. It's a neat technology, and it's what iDEN phones are actually built around. Small problem though: the normal connection times have gone for a vacation lately in Florida; due to wierd network issues it's been taking up to 3 seconds (!) to make the connection if you're not already in the walkie-talkie session (3 seconds of holding down the button before you hear the near-famous triple beep).

Now for the other thing where iDEN rules: GPS. As far as I know no other phone technology has capitalized so much on GPS as iDEN handsets. Like walkie-talkie, this service is exclusive enough to make its way into prepaid offerings. Every new or even relatively new iDEN phone is GPS capable, and your coordinates can be found fairly easily, if not always quickly and accurately, though I have gotten six-foot accuracy. There are several programs that use GPS for some purpose or other with Boost Mobile. Blister's location-based game Swordfish (at which I was for awhile last week first, then I dropped to econd, then I reinstalled the game and lost my ability to keep racking up points) and the driving directions king TeleNav come to mind. The latter, be forewarned, does not necessarily have up-to-date gas prices, though if you get one $1.50 "trip" you can access all of its features as long as you don't navigate to the completion of a GPS-guided trip.

That's about all that's unique to Boost Mobile. Unlimited internet is 20 cents a day, but there are workarounds for this, and the free section of the internet is relatively expansive, a little better than T-Mobile To Go's free T-Zones. If you want web access, STi Mobile is a better choice, with its faster network. If you have a cable, however, the Opera Mini web browser is one of those workarounds that gets you free web browsing, and the program itself is free so if you insist on internet and wamt something HTML capable Boost can do that.

RIngtones are played through the speakerphone of course, and as such are only telephone-quality. So if you were looking to play beautiful and subtle MP3s as your ringtone, you can do the MP3 part but don't expect anything coming out of that speaker to be beautiful and subtle, though you can expect it to be able to be deafeningly loud. A neat little button on the i415 and other new phones lets you easily switch between the speakerphone and the handset speaker, which is also OK quality and can be fairly loud, for such things as playing voice recordings (finally a phone that will do it!) and using java programs.

Speaking of java programs, the i415's java support is good to excellent, with the ability to suspend one app or two and run others or use the phone in another way with the app quicly reopenable. Also, where the LG 225 on STi only includes the demo version of Jamdat's Bowling 2, the i415 includes the full version. Yay Boost!

All other features on the phone are relatively the same as those on similarly-priced phones elsewhere, though they may be more customizeable, better, or maybe even worse in my opinion a term that could describe the Recent Calls function, which is a numbers-only (or contact info if the number is in your address book) affair without date stamps or the ability to see whether a call ws missed, called, or received.

Overall, the i415 and Boost Mobile\Nextel\iDEN in general has its good and bad spots. GPS is readily available but finicky (may or may not get a signal) and fairly inaccurate, walkie talkie is slow right now, and call quality on regular calls is bad in some areas due to a high-compression "6:1" codec in use. Reception is solid though since Nextel employs a stronger 800-to-900-MHz frequency (MIRS, iDEN's technical frequency name like cellular and PCS bands on "normal" phones, slips in all over the place due to its having to dodge cellular frequencies and public safety equipment), although tower buildout isn't any more than that of carriers like Sprint on their home network. My verdict is that unless you use walkie talkie almost exclusively you'll want to carry some other cell phone around in addition to any Boost phone, one reason being that the rates are farly expensive for calling non=Sprint, non-Nextel home (Partners doesn't count as Mobile To Mobile), non-Boost numbers during weekdays, though night and weekend rates, as well as Mobile to Mobile are a reasonable ten cents a minute. Oh, and walkie talkie is expensive. Anyway, I'd say have a second phone if this is your primary...

LG 225

FIrst of all, this phone is a tad smaller than the 5225, and though the design is certainly different and requires a little getting used to it's a good design and I think it makes the phone a little smaller too. It has an internal screen maybe a tad smaller than the 5225's but the interface is still pretty well thought out, plus it has the Verizon-style "Grid" option for displaying menu choices.

It's fairly easy to record a call in progress, or record a voice recording, or record a name to use with the voice dialing function. Oh, and you can use voice recordings as ringtones, which actually sound passable. Speaking of ringtones, you can use 3gforfree to download either your own or someone else's ringtones to this phone, which plays them very well. The handset volume in normal mode is nice and loud, though not quite as loud as the 5225, but then you have the full-duplex speakerphone which picks up well above where the normal speaker leaves off and gets pretty loud before starting to clip.

As for the camera, it's VGA but the interface is pretty good with +/-2 EV exposure compensation and very good image quality, as you can see from my photos on this blog. Very good for a camera phone of course; I won't ditch my Olympus C 5050 just yet. ;) The camera does low-light surprisingly well, though the photos onscreen look granier and less saturated than they are on a PC screen or (I guess) in print. THe camera doesn't do video, and photos will be rejected if they're above 100k (phone won't save them) and at the highest quality the phone only holds 13 photos but hey, that's what the online albums are for...

When it works (STi is having problems with them right now) the 10-cent-a-day (web is 19 and web and pictures together are 29) picture messaging package is pretty good and pretty cheap. You get unlimited sent and received picture essages, which can also include a 15-second voice recording and a 255-character text message. So yes, it's cheaper and bigger than text messaging if you send or receive a few messages per day. You can also send picture messages from the online albums on your phone (hosted at plspictures.com) though for some reason the feature is broken right now (the whole picture messaging and albums function is broken currently). Uploaded pictures take a little while to display and pictures take a little while to upload or send but the service isn't agonizingly slow thanks to Sprint's 1xRTT network. It's just that you're uploading or downloading, if you selected the highest qual9ity and resolution on your phone, nearly 100k image files, and those take time.

The other component required for the online albums feature is [lain old unlimited web access, which the 225 does quite well. Pages load fairly quickly, even if they're bona fide, unconverted HTML, as long as they aren't too big. GMail Mobile works like a charm. Opera Mini won't run on this phone, but the included OpenWave browser is good enough so you won't be wishing for it at every turn. Oh, and 19 cents a day for unlimited net access isn't bad at all.

Picture caller ID, a self-portrait mode on the camera, and plenty of customization room round out this phone. It doesn't record video or play MP3s or radio, and the picture messaging service is shaky as of yet, but the phone is around $50 with a $100 rebate and all of its features work well, with great voice quaLity, good reception, and solid battery life. If you want a camera phone on prepaid and want full web access as well, this is much cheaper than the other offerings that provide you with these features (Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Cingular) and the phone is solid, whereas I've heard that the Audiovoxes aren't so hot and we all know what kind of battery life those bulky iDEN phones get (hint: not much). So while this phone could be a little better, it's worth the price before the rebate, and worth more than the price after.

Oh and yes, you can get this phone for free with a contract, if you want to join the dark side. But I have a feeling that picture messaging and web will be more expensive per month, plus you've got that ugly two-year commitment. On STi you only have to stick around for 90 days by making a phone call every 60 for them to ship out the $100 rebate.

Update to my selling...

I am trading my Nokia 3560 for a Boost Mobile i285. Therefore this phone isn't for sale any more :). My Beyond Wireless 5165 is still available however. It will be $10 plus however much airtime you want on it ($15 if you want $5, $20 if you want $10, etc.). Also to keep the phone active I'll make one call which in my roaming area would take four units. But anyway the 5165 is still for sale...or I can trade it for something...I'm looking for a CDMA phone with the 1900 band that I can activate on Verizon via PagePlus.

For Sale...

Oh and by the way, in order to make room for a shiny refurbished Motorola v170 and 250-minute card I need to get rid of a phone or two. Certain key people think I have too many phones.

So my Beyond Wireless phones, which are roaming where I live, are for sale. I'm going to add a $5 35-minute card to each of them, then make one roaming call to make sure the phones will stay active for 60 more days, and then they'll be ready for whoever gets them from me. THe phones will also include a Nokia home charger.

I'm selling the Nokia 5165 for $15 shipped anywhere in the US, and the Nokia 3560 for $35, also shipped anywhere in the US. The 5165 will come with around 30 units of airtime on it, and the 3560 will come with around 40. There are also a couple of monophonic ringtones on the 3560 that I sent it via SMS (Star Wars and MASH).

Both phones are in good to very good condition; I can provide photos to whoever wants them. The 3560 has some small wear signs on the front faceplate, but a new faceplate will make the phone as if nothing had happened. THe 3560 is an AT&T branded phone; the 5165 is SOC unlocked so it can be used on whatever TDMA or analog carrier you want.

If anybody has any more questions just email me at iansltx AT gmail DOT com (substitutions stop spam). This would also be the address to paypal me the money. I won't be able to send the phones until maybe the middle of next week as I won't be at home until then, but this also means that if someone wants it and pays for it that I can put a larger refill onto the phone.

I guess that's about it. Hope I haven't turned anyone off by this little ad ;)

Two Tracfone Promos

If you live in a zip code where Tracfone GSM service is available, now is a super time to buy in. Though the CDMA and TDMA phones on Tracfone are pretty much out of stock, leaving only the subpar Motorola v120s for "free" with a $20 card (now 60 minutes), the GSM sector has two great deals!

1. For people who don't want much of an upfront investment and don't mind a black-and-white phone, the Nokia 1100 is available with a $20 60-minute card "Free". What this really means is you pay for shipping and tax on the card's amount (another $7 if you include tax and ground shipping since the order is under $25, at $19.99) and get the phone as a result. In any case, $27 gets you a nice little Nokia 1100 (I've used it a little and think it's great for basic stuff, kind of like the Nokia 2126 ecept older and GSM) and a 60-minute card. If you can find just a 20-minute promo code for the card, you get a total of 200 minutes for $27, including referral minutes (email me). Not too shabby...

2. If you are willing to spend a little more (about twice as much as it turns out) you can get a refurbished (like the Nokia 1100 above and pretty much every other Tracfone promo) Motorola v170 flip phone "free" with a $50 250-minute card (formerly 200 minutes). Free shipping kicks in at $25 so this phone (you guessed it) only has tax to inflate its real price if you can wait a few days for it to arrive. THe nifty little secret of the Motorola v170 is that you can actually select the network you want to be on, subject to the phone's defaulting after a few minutes of idle to, if possible, to the home carrier's signal. This feat is best done with a Cingular-based sim card and service, marked by activation with the larger SingleRate map (the smaller one is T-Mobile). This little secret, which is free since roaming doesn't cost anything extra, helps if for example Cingular has "razed the bar" in your area as far as voice quality goes and there is a better carrier available. Aside from this, you also get a small-to-medium-sized flip phone with a color screen, though the internal-only screen seems only a little bigger than my LG phone's caller ID screen. And a 250-minute card. With a 50-minute promo code (which can be had) and referral minutes, you'll get 420 units of airtime with this phone...that's a lot especially since the package is around $54 (so you get an OK rate per minute wherever GSM service is available).

Interestingly, the price of these refurbished phones with their respective airtime cards are the exact same as those of new phones without the cards. I'll take the refurbs, thanks, as they're factory-spec and have a full warranty and look like new so there's nothing I really lose by going refurb except having to buy minutes later on.

Oh, and the promo lasts at least until next Thursday, and if it lasts to the next Friday it will last until the Thursday after since that's how Tracfone's website works. So you have a little bit of time to get the phone deals.

100th Post! Ringtones on STi!

Well, here I am around midnight Eastern Time posting this blog's 100th post...:)

Anyway, I was notified of this really neat place called 3gforfree.com. Or rather re-notified; I knew about it but had forgotten. The great thing about it is you can actually download, not just play or view, backgrounds and ringtones onto an STi LG phone. My downloads are now full of assorted ringers, both polyphonic and voice-type (an AK-47 :) ) from 3GForFree. You can also, after signing up, upload your own ringers and graphics for your phone...I'll probably do that soon.

Again the site is http://www.3gforfree.com and yes, you can download stuff right from your phone just by using this address.

Just So You Know, Sti Isn't Sprint, Mobile-to-Mobile-wise

I now have a Boost Mobile i415, which I will talk about after a few more posts. Quickly though, Boost has 10-cent-per-minute mobile-to-mobile calling between Boost phones and other Boost, Sprint PCS or Nextel phones...well, some Nextel phones; Partners-market phones aren't included yet. Anyway, you alo have a minutes-remaining announcement at the beginning of each outgoing call with Boost. I had about $20 in my Boost account when I placed a call to my STi phone. If it was a Mobile-to-Mobile call it would have said that I had over two hundred minutes remaining. Insted, it proclaimed that I had a little over 100.

So no folks, just because STi or someone else runs off of Sprint's netowkr, it doesn't mean you'll get Sprint or Boost or Nextel Mobile-to-Mobile rates when calling to them or receiving calls from them. Boost owners be forewarned; it will be somewhat of a ripoff to call an STi phone, just like it would be to call a Verizon, T-Mobile or landline phone.

Nokia 2126

My dad got this phone on the 4th of December, as Tracfone was (and is) being very slow to ship out a replacement Nokia 1221. The service was with Verizon, which sadly uses the 1900 band here and thus has subpar coverage. THus I would rather\he would rather be o back on the Five Star Wireless TDMA network (CDMA is available now but Tracfone will have none of it) even if it meant going back to a Nokia 1221 (it will) because the reception is so much better. ANyway, now to the thing that does do well: the Nokia 2126.

This phone, which I posted a photo or two of awhile back, is basically the same as the Virgin Mobile Shorty or the MetroPCS Nokia 2116, except with a color screen and a color interface. So all the accessories that work on those phones will work on this one as well. Oh, and calls to *228 are both free and encouraged by TracFone, but don't expect any miracles...it did not change my dad's phone's home\roaming area. Now to actually describing the phone...

First off, it's tiny! It's not a Razr but for $20 plus tax (what my dad got it for) it is one small ph6 Review!one. It is the typical Nokia bar, with power, send, end etc. keys in the normal arrangement. The up key on the phone has an interesting feature in standby mode though. One press turns the phone's bright LED flashlight, housed in the power button, on for the duration of the press. The next press, if done soon after, turns the LED on until a third press turns it off again. Ingenious.

Speaking of the up button, I have one small gripe about the mechanics of this phone: sometimes pressing the up button discolors the screen, probably because to make something this small with that little money you can't always make sure that things aren't overlapping in the least. This little annoyance isn't a deal-breaker though.

About the screen, four words sum it up: small, pixelated but super! Now how you can manage to have 96 by 65 distinct rows and columns of pixels on a screen a bit larger than a postage stamp I don't know exactly, but the fact still remains that the screen is beautiful! The interface makes use of both animation and color, and as with all color Nokias can be in a variety of colors that are nice and vibrant. And yes, you get that lovely cream of the crop Nokia interface. The interface sounds seem to have a CDMA, more utilitarian feel than the GSM sound sets on such Nokias as the 6010, but the ringtones are fantastic enough that the fact that you can't get any more than the preloaded 19 isn't so bad. Also, the vibration motor truly rocks this ultra-light phone's world, so you are going to feel the phone vibrate to the beat of the ringtone you selected. And speaking of ringtones, they can be nice and loud with the top-right-mounted loudspeaker, which also serves as the speakerphone speaker.

Which brings us into the more "practical" feature set. The speakerphone is good, though not perfect, especially considering the form factor it is packed into. There is clipping at higher volumes, but volumes can get pretty darn loud. The earpiece volume is a bit on the conservative (read "soft") side but it is definately sufficient. Speaking of voice-related features, the phone can record and store one minute's worth of voice recordings (as far as I know there's no maximum number of recordings so pick a length, any length, as long as it's a minute or less).

There are, of course, the usual extras for a modern phone, such as a calculator and date book, and both of these features are done well by Nokia, though I'll stay with a dedicated PDA or maybe a PDA\cell phone for now. There are a few good Java games on the phone, the standard fare of all color Nokias since the 3560. As Tracfone doesn't support anything more than voice and text messaging, the phone doesn't support anything more either, but it does both of these satisfyingly well. One gripe with text messaing though is that the message-sending process is somewhat backward, but again this is a forgiveable quibble.

Overall, this is a great phone that does perfectly everything Tracfone's network can do, and if any CDMA provider offered this phone as one of a bunch of "voice phones" as Sprint calls them, I would quickly pick this one if it wasn't too expensive...that's why I don't have the Verizon version, the $80 2128i ;). Reception, as I should have said much earlier, is very good, and battery life is superb as well. What more could you want from a phone geared toward voice and text as far as network-based services go? I don't want anything :). So when in doubt, buy this phone...and no, I will not let you go away alive clutching that horrible Tracfone called the Motorola c343 if the Nokia 2126 was anywhere nearby. :)

STi Mobile Will Have Renyo Vi-2300

This phone doesn't have a camera or some other whizbang feature in that direction, but it has Sprint's walkie-talkie service, ReadyLink. And yes, STi will be supporting that feature when the phone comes out, which will be around January 24th, or so the STi rep told me Wednesday. Granted, ReadyLink isn't Nextel as far as connection speeds go, though Nextel seems oddly enough to be going slower lately for the initial connection time, but it is definately a walkie-talkie service with the added benefit of the phone's normal number being its walkie number so you don't have to remember an arcane series of digits and stars. Oh, and ReadyLink is a whole lot cheaper than Direct Connect, at 79 cents a day (whether you use it or not but you can always have it enabled or disabled) for both ReadyLink and web access. So the effective cost of ReadyLink is 60 cents a day, 40% of the cost of Direct Connect on Boost Mobile.

Small problem: not too many people are on ReadyLink while everyone with a Nextel or Boost phone has Direct Connect. But the cheapness of ReadyLink on STi will probably convince a few people to move over. Granted, the Sanyo VI-2300 isn't small, but its speakerphone looks big and "bad" and the phone appears to be well-built (and it's still not as big as a Nextel i730) so I don't think anyone is going to mind too much about the size.

In short, at the end of January STi is coming out with ReadyLink...woohoo!

Merry Christmas!

As opposed to other places, I’ll be open for the holidays J. I was let off from school on Thursday at 11:15 or so, and now I am on vacation, so now I have a good bit of time to blog with the latest happenings in the prepaid phone world. I’m also thinking about making a “static” part of this website so you can look up quickly the pluses, minuses and wierdnesses of prepaid services and phones that I have owned, own, or know a good deal about. Then again, I might not set it up…it all depends…

One thing I do know I’ll do is add quite a few blog entries over the next few days, so rejoice and show your rejoicing by emailing me or by clicking on a few ads that interest you…pretty much all of the money that those ads generate goes into my buying of cell phone stuff anyway so your clicks make for more content here.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and I’ll be posting a lot more soon…

Tracfone Lowering Rates!!!

I got an email today touting Tracfone's new lower rates. The best thing it does is for the 40-minute card, with effects on the 100, 200 and double-minute cards. The last three are nothing to shout about since I think they merely replace the coupon book that came with Tracfones before this month or last month or so, but the first is entirely new. Also, all the cards now are unlimitedly given those minute amounts (instead of one or four times as the coupon codes would let you do) and, best of all, you can add even more coupon codes on top of the cards, and of course all the minutes get doubled with a Double Minute card! Now to the facts:

40 minute card -> 60 minutes, $20, was 50 cents, now 33 cents a minute
100 minute card -> 120 minutes, $30, was 30 cents, now 25 cents a minute
200 minute card -> 250 minutes, $50, was 25 cents, now 20 cents a minute
Double minute card (300 minutes) -> 400 minutes, $130, was 43.3, now 32.5 cents a minute (not counting double minutes)

It looks as though the 400-minute, $80 card, will be dead soon, as now the $50, 250-minute card has the same cost per minute for less money. Then again, $50 STi Mobile cards still sell, and they don't have any promotions that make their minutes cheaper with larger quantities bought. Still, with the tiered price structure that Tracfone has I think the 400-minute card will go.

I have to say that Tracfone is still one of the more expensive carriers on the block as far as cost per minute goes (everybody now is 25 cents a minute or below, even with a $20 card, whereas it takes a $30 card to get those rates) if you don't take advantage of promotionals. Of course, Tracfone is famous\infamous for its promos so you can fairly easily get 20 cents a minute on a $20 or $30 card (eBay has the former for around $14 and there are promo codes floating around). Plus they have refer-a-friend.

Even with these pluses Tracfone usually doesn't turn out to be the cheapest carrier around, but if they use a cerrier in your area that has an even more outrageous prepaid option, or none at all, and great coverage, it may very well be the way to go, now especially since their rates are a tad lower.

Boost Mobile Refills - Cheap Off Of eBay

The hotlink in the title is to an eBay auction that is selling two $20 cards (180 days of service; I will probably eventually get this) for $30. The same seller also has a $50 card for $40 and a $30 card for $24, and two $30 cards for $45. I'd say the two $20 cards are the best deals though, since it's not a large investment and you're getting minutes for 75 cents on the dollar. Careful though; it looks like if he doesn't get his payment before you apply the cards to your phone the phones are as good as dead, as the accounts will be suspended...still this airtime is cheap!

I Saw A Razr

Just a few minutes ago I saw the far-famed phone commonly known as the Motorola Razr V3. This was a totally real and working model too, not some display dummy. The guy who had it was on t-mobile and thus the phone had that logo inostensibly displayed on the back of the silver phone. The phone had its nice huge screen, the easily-covered camera, a metallic interface, and a wide, thin form factor as if a normal camera phone had been put in a squasher. I know, I'm a barbarian to have not seen in person a real razr until now, but now i know why people pay three hundred dollars for this phone. T-mobile actually sells this same phone on prepaid, without contracts or other such garbage, for $250. Cingular sells both the black and silver versions of this phone for $200 but as I do not have their towers where I live I couldn't get it if I wanted to. You can actually get it for just a little more expensive at myworldphone.com so I would probably get it there. That is one sweet phone though... :)

-------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a T-Mobile wireless phone.

Tracfone Lowering Rates?!?

Sorry but I had to post this as well. When activating my dad's Nokia 2126 (yeah, the one that does analog) I got a nice green message as part of the page to the effect that Tracfone is now lowering its raes and they would be in effect the next time I refilled. when i added the refer-a-friend minutes a day or two later the same message cropped up and no rates had changed. Ha ha.

I have a hunch though that we Tracfone users will wake up some Friday morning (the customary time of Tracfone website renewal) to a fresh new rate scheme for Tracfone. Dunno whether it will be lower rates (Captain Obvious would think so), more features (doubt this one), longer expirations (doubt this one), or no more 2-for-1 roaming fees on CDMA and TDMA phones (maybe but doubt it), but something is definately brewing :) (notice I didn't make a pun with BREW as Tracfone doesn't have it...yet ;) ).

Boost Is Neat, Get Me A GoPhone and Nokia 2126

First off, Boost Mobile, I have heard, gives you $5 extra for actiating online. And $25 extra until the 31st. And $10 upon activation. So you get $40 to start with when you buy a new Boost phone. The super Target deal is gone now but a boost i415 can be had anywhere for $60, which makes the phone itself $20. Not too bad for something with easily accessible GPS, walkie-talkie and a color screen...It's on my wish list since the ad money from this site isn't coming in till January...

Second, in my area they won't even sell me a Cingular GoPhone. If someone was nice and charitable I'd PayPal them $30 (the price of the phone) to buy a Nokia 3120 GoPhone and have it shipped to my address (if you're interested email me). I'd give the money once the tracking info got sent me...and I would give the money...I really would like the Nokia 3120 :)

Third, there are some who have doubted even with the photo in the last post that the Nokia 2126 is actually analog-capable. Granted, Nokia's website doesn't show that it is analog but the fact remains that it has a specific option in the Settings menu (under Network > Phone Mode or something similar; I don't have the phone in front of me) called "Analog Only", the NAM programming menu (*3001#12345#) specifically represents AMPS (geek-speek for analog), I can put the phone into field test mode and it will actually show when I am on analog that AMPS is active, and (tying in with the former reason) the A beside the roaming icon, where normally a D (CDMAOne, the older variant of CDMA's network) or a 1x (1xRTT, the newer, better, high-speed, higher-capacity CDMA variant) would be, certainly doesn't stand for Apple ;).

If anybody still doubts I will personally email them cameraphone shots of the field test screens and such proving that the phone can do analog. That is, as long as your first part of your email doesn't have a period in it, as for some wierd reason this causes my cameraphone to just give me an error message and stop composing the message. More on that when I catch up with my life again :)

Nokia 2126! AKA It Does Analog Ye Unbelievers! :)

My dad got this great phone Sunday. It is the nokia 2126 on tracfone which here runs on the fairly good verizon network. It is super small and has lots of features for the twenty plus tax my dad said for it. The photos are to prove that it does analog.

Shorty Marked Down

Is you can see wal-mart in my area has marked down the nokia shorty to the price of the tracfone color version of the phone, which i now have more on that later...

My New Cameraphone!

This is a photo of my new camera phone, which arrived yesterday. I am actually posting this from my phone, and the photo was taken by my phone, hence the usual subpar but acceptable quality of the photo. Yes, it is the LG 225 that arrived yesterday...

Sansung x495 for T-Mobile: Now $60!

This phone is now $59.88 (plus tax of course unless you are in Oregon or something like that) at Target. It's a nice phone too, being a color flip with a nice big external screen, which appears to be that luscious technology called OLED :). Thus the T-Mobile To Go Samsung x495 is the lowest-priced color flip phone with an external screen available for prepaid, not counting my own LG 5225 on STi because of the rebate.

And if you want to unlock the phone, T-Mobile's policy is that after 90 days of service and if a refill has been purchased within the least 30 days they will give you an unlock code for whatever T-Mobile phone you have...useful of you have a non-Nokia model. I haven't satisfied the 90-day condition yet but when I do...I don't know...maybe I'll unlock someone's T-Mobile phone...

STi Activation on the Web & Cheap Cameraphones

STi Mobile now has on their website an activation page for most of their phones, the notable exceptions being the Audiovox 8912 and the Sanyo 2300. But now if you want to activate your shiny new STi phone chances are you can do it on the web. I wonder if you get anything extra for doing so. I'll check when I reactivate my 5225 (I won't activate my 225 when it gets here per se, as I'll just be transferring the number over).

Also, the main thing I wanted to talk about is the price of cameraphones on prepaid. T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and STi Mobile all now have phones that are under $110 with rebates and taxes. I'm not sure about cingular, but I think they're still above the threshold. Boost is expensive as well. Verizon too I think is still very expensive with their phones. All the other prepaids don't have MMS capability.

Anyway. You can get the LG 225 from STi for $40 after the rebate (of course; I got it last night :) ), and possibly the Audiovox 8912 (similar to the Virgin Mobile Flasher, which is $90 or so at WalMart.com the last time I looked) is cheap as well with a rebate. Virgin Mobile's Audiovox 8915 (aka The Snapper) is $100 right now, as is T-Mobile's Nokia 6101 if you buy it at Targett. The Motorola v330 is $110 with the rebat at Amazon...

eBay Deals!

I was surfing eBay for the umpteenth time today and saw three very good deals on refill cards, as well as an eBay store that I had seen awhile back and found really nice...

Net10 $300 card for $219 (making for about 7.3 cents a minute and $18.25 a month for 250 minutes a month)
http://cgi.ebay.com/NET-10-PREPAID-WIRELESS-PHONE-CARD-RETAIL-300_W0QQitemZ5833001350QQcategoryZ43308QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Boost Mobile refill cards for 80 cents on the dollar ($16 for $20, $24 for $30, $40 for $50)
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZrecabron

$250 in Free2Go refill cards for $110
http://cgi.ebay.com/10x-25-AT-T-Free-2-Go-PREPAID-CARDS-pre-paid-kic_W0QQitemZ5835082161QQcategoryZ43308QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This last item is great because not only can you get TDMA service for 11 cents a minute, but you may also get approached by Cingular (through a text message) asking you to switch over to their new GoPhone GSM service. You'll probably have to buy a phone and aritime, but you can get those for just $30 online. Once you get them, you can just take your whole $250 over to GoPhone and have normally-priced (vs. the ripoff Cingular usually is on GoPhone) minutes, text messaging, email and web (0.44 cents per kilobyte isn't that bad if you're using Cingular's higher-speed EDGE network).

And now for the store: Project Recell
stores.ebay.com/Project-RE-cell-Make-A-Difference

These guys buy people's old phones from them, then sell them on eBay at low starting prices. For example, an unlocked, like-new Nokia 3595 GSM phone startes at $10 I think and has a Buy It Now option for $35 plus shipping, a price that can be found practically nowhere else on eBay for some odd reason...

They have an abundance of Verizon, AT&T TDMA, and GSM phones, so if you want to get a phone for, for example, PagePlus or Beyond Wireless, this is probably the place to go. I thought a little bit about bidding on several Kyocera Phantoms (KX414 I think), activating them on PagePlus, then selling them on eBay as PagePlus has a dearth of modern phones for sale.

Hope these deals help someone :)

I'm Getting A Camera Phone!

I ordered this phone off of CheapphoneCards a few minutes ago. It's a camera phone, which I used to consider a mere oddity that was totally worthless, but I'll talk about that later. After the rebate this phone will be just $40.29, plus it has a $10 card, a car charger and a leather case, the last of which I'll sell to somebody (I don't know who). I used refill18 to take the price of the phone down by about $11.70, thus making it this nice price. I'm selling my old phone (3 months old, LG 5225) for $20 net ($40 but $20 goes to a replacement screen as the external screen as I said before is sort of peeled and bleeding for absolutely no reason and LG didn't want to repair it except for $75). So the net cost of this camera phone, per se, is $20.29 to me. Not bad for a non-monthly prepaid phone, though I'll have to keep the phone active for 90 days before they process the rebate (no big deal; all I'd have to do is make two or three calls, and as this will be my main cell phone I'll certainly make more than that).

Anyway, as you can see the title of this post is a hotlink. It's to the PhoneScoop specificaitons page for the LG 225 (aka PM-225 by Sprint's naming scheme as this is a Sprint phone). Besides the camera, opposed to the LG 5225, I get a two-way speakerphone, improved battery life, analog capability (for emergencies; as of yet no analog roaming is available on STi but I can see them pulling that rabbit out of their hat as well with all the neat things that have happened lately) and a couple other smaller features that I've forgotten to mention but are still there.

As to the reason I'm getting a camera phone, I "do" two other blogs besides this one and it would be really nice to be able to simply snap a picture and in just a few seconds have it publish to the blog of my choice. It's also cheap, at 29 cents a day and even this amount discounted and even zeroed out by reward points at CheapPhoneCards. The 29 cents also includes web browsing, or so the VCheapPhoneCards site says, so as I would want the web browsing package anyway picture messaging's net cost is just 10 cents a day. I'm not sure if unlimited text messagin is included in this fee, but if it is I'll surely use it :).

Just so everyone knows, I do have a normal camera, an Olympus C-5050 Zoom with 640 MB of CompactFlash cards (3 total). However, the camera is fairly large and a little under a pound with the batteries and card installed, so needless to say I can't quite take it everywhere. I can take a less-than-an-inch-thick, 3.3-ounce camera that also happens to be a cell phone pretty much everywhere though. Granted, the image quality of a camera phone right now, especially these early-generation 640x480 models, is a far cry from that of my camera but it is certainly bearable for internet posting and the portability factor is a big plus. I'll probably still carry around my camera many places but with the phone I'll probably be able to get snapshots and such that the bigness of a conventional camera wouldn't have afforded me.

So, to end the slight bit of a rant on camera phones, cameras certainly have their place in the world, as do PDAs, another function that some people have said cell phones would take over, but it's nice to have something that will take a picture, send it to a blog, surf the web and make a phone call all in a small package where a camera, a laptop or PDA, and even a small basic cell phone would not fit.

And to end all of this, yes I will post about my own experiences with STi and what looks to be a really nice phone for the price (though it's now free I think on sprint.com).

Tracfones Just Got Cheaper

I went on Tracfone.com today, as every Friday they usually refresh the list of phones for sale with something different or cheaper. This time I was in for a nice surprise: the Motorola c155 phone is down to $30. I personally don't like the phone, as the screen is small and the navigation buttons are a bit too easily pushed, but the fact remains that it's now the lowest-priced color SingleRate phone available (the black-and-white Nokia 1100, which I would rather have, is $20).

The second, in my opinion better deal is with the Motorola v170. It is now $50, so you can finally afford the only color Tracfone flip phone. Granted, its screen is very small and it has no caller ID screen, but the phone itself is on the small side and if you want a flip phone that uses Cingular's contract-class GSM network this is it.

Coupon Is Great, Virgin Mobile Shorty

Just to let everybody know, refill18 seems to work on everything in the prepaid phones and cards section of CheapPhoneCards.com. Which means you can get a nice little discount off the LG 225 camera phone $149 package. I think I will get that either today or tomorrow...

Also, I had a firsthand, though very fleeting, look at VIrgin Mobile's Nokia Shorty (aka 2115i\2116i). It has nice poly ringtones and is nice and small with an OK-sized screen but the fact that it's greyscale kind of threw me off. Granted it's $30, but hey. Tracfone has a color one of these for $20. I don't think that the blue backlight, or whatever color it was, kicked in enough to shed the dreariness of a greyscale screen paired with such a nice form factor. I hope Virgin Mobile comes out with a Color Shorty like Tracfone has; a color screen would make the phone hjust about right...

Note on the code and STi Web

I just got an email giving me the code that I already posted. It also said the code expires the 27th so get your refill cards soon because this promo may not last.

Also, when I got my phone back I nearly immediately activated web access. At 19 cents a day with the first 14 free for unlimited, faster-than-dialup access, needless to say I'm happy. When I get the LG 225 cameraphone (which will be soon) I'll most likely get a cable so I can have a nice fast always-on connection on my computer. And of course be able to directly transfer all of those pretty picutres I take if I'm not in the mood to send them over the web.

STi Coupon Code and My Phone

FIrst, the refill8 coupon code for CheapPhoneCards and STi Mobile has gone down to 2% now. In its place is refill18. Granted, the latter takes the 8% off the already-discounted card, thus making the discount a few cents less, but it's still very, very close to a full 11% discount so the party isn't over yet :).

Second, I didn't want to pay $75 to fix an $89 phone so my phone still has the inexplicably cracked and bleeding outer LCD, which has gotten a little worse, and a slight dark spot, which is getting less and less evident, on the inner LCD. I'm negotiating to get a new screen set for $20 though so when I sell this phone to a friend it will be just as good as the day I bought it.

Speaking of buying, the $89 rebate for the phone, which came back from Huntsville Tuesday, came in the mail Monday. That phone is now officially better than fgree, just like those TMIWireless Black Razrs with the two-year Cingular contract :)

T-Mobile To Go: My Experience

To start off, sorry that I haven't posted for ever so long. I'm here now to say that you can start clicking those ads again; I've got a lot to post tonight.

Last Tuesday my drama teacher gave me her "old" phone, a Cingular Nokia 6010. The battery charger didn't work but as all but one of my family's phones are Nokias that problem was easily remedied by using one of our other chargers. A few hours later the phone was, after just two tries, successfully unlocked and just waiting for a shiny new T-Mobile To Go simcard, which I got off of eBay with $30 of credit for $15 and which arrived in an envelope Monday. That evening I put the simcard in the phone, and as it was already activated the T-Mobile signal bars showed up right away.

A fairly quick call to 611 gave me a new, closer-to-local though not quite local number (I'll probably port in something later) and later I got the web and MMS settings. Still later I was happily surfing the free, albeit limited, T-Zones and buying Let It Be as a ringtone. I also sent a picture message (which for some nice odd reason was free) to enable my phone for receiving multimedia messages, then sent it several MIDI ringtones which arrived over the rest of the night and the next morning when I turned the phone on again.

Later that day I found out the bad side of T-Mobile To Go to its utmost, which granted isn't horrible but would steer me clear of it for my area, but for my area only as the service seems solid.

The thing I noticed with the phone was that coverage was very "fragile", probably due to my being in some wierd fringe coverage areas (even in the middle of town) and T-Mobile's operating on the less-persistent PCS 1900 frequency. It could've been the phone, but it would have to be a defect with that specific phone as the Nokia 6010\3595 (same phone, different faceplate) has one of the best RFs (reception ratings) of any phone of that network (GSM). This basically means that you can be ten feet away in the same atmosphere (either open air or in the same type of building with practically the same walls between you and the outside air) from a full signal and get practically nothing, along with the dropped calls and such that a one-bar GSM signal brings.

Due to this problem, I was double-charged for a ringtone that warranted a call to customer service to get sent correctly (and to kill the second charge). I'd have to say that their customer service is truly world-class though. I don't think I'll make T-Mobile To Go my main prepaid phone, as I got it mainly to have unlimited text messaging (STi is cheaper for voice since I can get 12 cents a minute in denominations as low as $10) anyway. But if T-Mobile's signal is good in your area and you want a wide selection of phones (any 1900-capable unlocked or T-Mobile phone will do if it's GSM) T-Mobile To Go is a superb option.

Outrageous Boost Mobile Deals!

I'm really sorry for myself since I passed this deal combo up but I may yet be able to get it. The first deal is only valid through Saturday, sdo you'll have to hurry, and is available only at Target though you may be able to get a pricematch elsewhere. The second deal is available until January 31, 2006 I'm pretty sure and isn't store-specific. Also at Target any Boost Mobile phone comes with a free Boost Mobile compilation CD, normally $6, if the CDs are around.

1. At Target and during this week you can get the Boost Mobile i415 phone for just $50, and get a $20 card for free to boot, thus making the phone really $30 including the $10 activation credit. So you can have as much as 6 months of service...

2. If you activate any Boost phone or reactivate any dormant Boost sim card ($15 I think) you get $25 extra credit!

So combining the two above promotions you can get $55 (maybe $45 but I think $55) of airtime and a phone for $50 plus tax, making the phone somewhere between $10 and free! The i415 is a nice phone too, not some Nextel freebie (read decrepit nobody-buys-it i205). It has a fair-sized color screen, GPS (go through the menus and you can get your coordinates, no fees involved), free MotoTalk off-network digital walkie-talkie through a hack from the guys at HowardForums (range is five miles I think but of course you can only talk to other MotoTalk-capable handsets that are in MotoTalk mode) and of course the thing that makes Nextel phones just a tad bigger than the rest: that $1.50 a day unlimited, lightening-fast Direct Connect walkie-talkie service that makes Nextel stand out from every other carrier.

Now to yell at our local Wal-Mart's manager enough to let me get this deal as a pricematch, or maybe even two of these phones so we can really do MotoTalk...

STi Developments

I was having a chat with an STi rep last night and I got these tidbits, some good, some not so good:

1. The rep said web is 19 cents a day. I've heard both 17 and 19 so I can't really confirm this, but just so everyone would know both reps that I've talked to have said it is 19 cents. I'll find out for myself when I get my phone back tomorrow and activate web browsing.

2. The rep said that picture messaging, at 29 cents a day, not only includes text messaging (pretty sure about that) but also includes web browsing! So if you have a camera phone and want web and will send a few picture messages each month by all means go for the picture messaging option.

3. The rep said that push-to-talk (aka ReadyLink) is 79 cents a day (!). This includes web access but, outside of the normal price for web access this service is 60 cents a day, or about $18 a month! Sorry, but I don't need walkie-talkie that bad. The fee is charged every single day but of course a quick call to 611 can turn it on and off. Granted, Boost Walkie-Talkie is $1.50 a day but Nextel Direct connect is faster than any CDMA-based system so far. Personally, there is no longer a hard choice between the LG 225 and the Sanyo 2300, STi's only phone so far capabl;e of ReadyLink.

4. STi's site will be updated "soon"...

5. There are several phones hiding out in Staples, the last of which will make it (maybe more) to STi's website:

Sanyo 200 (voice)
Samsung a660 (internet)
Audiovox 8912 (camera phone)
Sanyo 2300 (ReadyLink)

I Am Not Affiliated...

I was just looking at www.go4prepaid.com, seeing if it was available should I wish to upgrade to a real domain name. It wasn't (yet another phone card seller) so let me say one thing: they and I share nothing but the same. And sorry but I don't know who went online first...

Wal-Mart Deals In Person

I was at Wal-Mart a few minutes ago and found several neat deals and confirmed some others. Some have to do with postpaid, but there are prepaid deals too. There are also postpaid ripoffs...

PREPAID

1. Heard of Movida, the 20-cents-a-minute Spanish-oriented prepaid? Right now they're giving $45 worth of airtime, equivalent to 225 minutes, with at least their Nokia 2270 phone, which is $30, at least at my Wal-Mart. Calling the phone free the cost per minute would be about 13.3 cents a minute. Not bad for Sprint service with a free phone that doesn't need any rebates, though I wouldn't get anything beyo0nd the phone as STi's rates are so much better in the longer run, plus you get a fancier phone for free.

2. I saw the light...um...er...the Nokia 2126. This has to be one of the neatest-looking budget phones out there. Personally, I don't like the slightly overstated look of the original Nokia Shorty (too shiny on the front) but the form factor is to be beat and the 2126does it right. I didn't see a price today but the Wal-Mart guy told me this little gem is $19.88 when I called yesterday so it looks very, very good. One small problem is it has a paltry fifteen ringtones, but there are probably some good ones in there.

POSTPAID

1. I reconfirmed what I saw last time: at least my Wal-Mart is offering the Sanyo 2300 phone for free with a 2-year Sprint contract, or for $40 with a 1-year, or $190 without any contract whatsoever. I have a feeling this one is going to show up on STi sometime soon, since reps hinted about it last month, though I may have to search bricks and mortar stores to find it. It is on the large side, but has a super speakerphone (look at that lovely grill on the outside :) ), a nice big screen, web access and ReadyLink. I heard tell that the last is being offered (I'm assuming using this phone) on STi for 9 cents a day. If this phone comes in as free with a rebate, which it probably will, I'm going to have a heck of a time deciding which phone to buy, this one, which most likely has the great Sanyo reception that its phones on Sprint are known for, or the LG 225 cameraphone.

2. First, the neat thing about the new Sprint plans: both networks (Sprint and Nextel) now have an unlimited plan direct from the carrier. Granted, it's $200 a month but for Sir (or Madam) Talks-A-Lot (and I mean A LOT as Sprint\Nextel also has up to 4000 minute Fair & Flexible plans, though the tab for this is in the order of $150 a month) will love having no overages...EVER. Oh, and it looks like roaming is included on the Sprint plan so we now have a cell phone that you can talk on almost anywhere for as long as the battery holds out every day of the month and not worry about the bill being larger than...something... For $10 you can get unlimited Walkie-Talkie or ReadyLink, whichever technology (Nextel for the former, Sprint for the latter) you choose. Nextel has had an unlimited plan for quite a while now, but I'm thinking it was maybe $20 more expensive or so. Qwest also had an unlimited plan (they run off of Sprint) but it too was around $220 and limited to Sprint's home network.

3. Now the bad things about the new Sprint plans. On Nextel they have a Fair & Flexible plan for 1000 minutes, which is $56. Thank you very much, but for $50 I can get a plan on T-Mobile with half again that many anytime minutes. They also have a new lower end Power Connect plan (unlimited local Walkie-Talkie, otherwise like any other carrier's normal plan, with free nights and weekends, but no mobile-to-mobile) for $36, with a paltry 300 minutes. Again, T-Mobile has a similar plan (though without the free nights or Walkie-Talkie) for $30. For $4 more a month you get 100 extra minutes. Of course then you could just get T-Mobile's 1500 anytime minutes promo, which is about what "unlimited" carrier users call per month anyway. There is also the incredulously expensive $30-for-200-minutes Fair&Flexible deal on both Sprint and Nextel, as well as the horrendous $60-for-400-minute Sprint PCS Fair&Flexible family plan. If my memory serves me right you can get 500 minutes and the same features for $50 on T-Mobile, though I think SPrint Fair&Flexible is the America variety which means that up to half of your minutes can be off-network roaming.

And that's about all I found out at Wal-Mart tonight.

Virgin Mobile Flasher Cheaper than Expected!

OK, now there's a reason to get the Audiovox 8910 Flasher V7 again: it's $10 cheaper or so than The Snapper. That's right, you can get a cameraphone now for a mere $90, without any rebate junk either. For the extra $10 you get a louder ringer and AIM capabilities though...

Interesting though that now the Flasher is the same price as the Vox, which isn't even a camera phone!

Virgin Mobile Phones Cheaper Than Expected

OK. I just found out that The Snapper (Audiovox 8915) on Virgin Mobile's site is just $100 so no biggie that Wal-Mart has it for just a few dollars less. But there are also some neat deals that Virgin Mobile has pulled out of the closet or pulled out of the rollback bag:

NEW PHONES
1. The Slider Sonic is now $190, so you can finally buy a music phone that is very, very modern, albeit low-end in the scheme of things, for a moderate price. It says that you can transfer videos from the phone to a Windows XP-equipped computer, but I'm not sure about photos. Help anyone?

2. The Snapper, as has been mentioned, is now down to $100, so there's no longer any reason to get the V7 Flasher.

3. The Kyocera K10 is back down to its normal price of $50, after a brief stint of being a whopping $60.

4. The Nokia Shorty phone is now down to a reasonable $30, though the Tracfone Nokia 2126 is a much better deal in my opinion, at $20 or thereabouts at Wal-Mart, plus the latter is color and can come with 120 minute (the refer-a-friend deal strikes again; email me)

OLDER PHONES (they have golden oldies out now, I guess to clean out their moldy stock :) )

1. The Kyocera Slider is back for a little bit for a very reasonable $40. So if you want one of them thar sliding telephones, this one is cheap and in color.

2. The Audiovox 8500 is back at $35. SKIP IT! everybody says this isn't a good phone at all, and granted it's the cheapest Virgin Mobile flip phone by a long shot, but it is cheap for a really bad reason and I wonder why it isn't cheaper...they are selling refurbished models with a 90-day warranty, so if it breaks on day 91 :( for you

3. The Kyocera K7 and K9 phones are back for $25. Why you'd get the K7 over the newer K9 (which was only phased out this summer I believe) is uncertain but hey, both of them are there so take your pick.

Not that I reccommend Virgin Mobile or anything, but hey, their phones just got almost across-the-board a good bit cheaper...

Cheaper and Cheaper! STi and Wal-Mart and Cingular

First off, STi's web access, according to an actual user haydeno (HowardForums) is actually 17 cents a minute, not 19. I'll take that extra 60 or so cents a month, which brings the price down to the $4.75-$5.25 range depending on whether it's February 2005 or October...

Second, Wal-Mart has really cheap prices on phones, even with tax! The Virgin Mobile Audiovox Snapper (8915 really) is, along with the V7 Flasher (8910), $97.66 at my local Wal-Mart, a full FIFTY DOLLARS cheaper than Virgin Mobile sells it for online, and about 40 dollars cheaper with tax included at Wal-Mart. Also, if you're in an area without SingleRate Tracfones (Nokia 1100, Nokia 2600, Motorola c155, Motorola v170) at least, and possibly in other areas, you can get the new Nokia 2126 "Color Shorty" on their CDMA service for $19.88 or thereabouts, really really nice for a small, color phone that may be able, through *228 and hitting option 2 if you're on Verizon, to have the coverage of the largest home and roaming network in the US! :)

Third, Cingular has the excellent Nokia 3120 on sale as a GoPhone package for $29.99, including a $10 activation credit for their prepaid service. I'm pretty sure shipping is free. Nokia phones are easily unlockable, so this just might become my next T-Mobile To Go phone (instead of the Cingular Nokia 6010 given to me, or maybe I'll keep it).

STi is Rolling!

First off, I found out that the reason we're not seeing payme25 on the LG 225 at CheapPhoneCards is that they don't get near as much of a margin on that phone. Too bad...but I guess when the deal is a little older STi will be a little more generous generous and thus we will se that code for this phone.

Second, I'm getting my LG 5225 back from Huntsville, Alabama and their perfectly understandable technicians (yay for them!), but alas, the external screen isn't repaired. I'm not paying $75 to fix something on a phone that I could get for $84.95 with an $89 rebate! When my rebate comes in I'll sell the phone for $30, loaded with ringtones and apps (all downloaded for free of course) and in its slightly incapacitated, but still highly useable, condition, unless I find someone who will repair it for $20 or so.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting: STi now has out web access and picture messaging...and both are unlimited! Both services are charged daily and though you get charged every day (even when you don't use the service) you can, with a quick call to customer service, turn them on and off as needed! What's more, unlimited picture messaging includes unlimited text messaging. Text junkies rejoice! IM junkies should just get web access unless they have the 225 cameraphone.

Pricing for unlimited web access (don't know about tethering but if it's possible with the phone it's probably possible with the service) is 19 cents a day, or around $5.70 a month ($5.89 on long months, $5.32 or $5.51 in February), and unlimited picture and text messaging is 29 cents a day, or $8.70 a month ($8.99 on long months, $8.12 or $8.41 in February). I'll take that :)

Beyond Wireless and STi Greatness

A Beyond Wireless rep told me today that new, GSM or CDMA (didn't say which or what carrier it would be on) service would be out in about two weeks. Yay Beyond!

Also, I haven't confirmed this myself but a post on HowardForums says that STi Mobile now has web for 17 cents a day, web and picture messaging for 29 cents a day and walkie-talkie (Ready-Link) for 9 cents a day, all for unlimited access! As I said I don't know about this as I don't have my STi phone right now (being inspected\repaired in Huntsville, Alabama) but if it's true STi rocks once again!

Unlock It!

A few hours ago I unlocked a Nokia 6010 a friend gave me (Cingular brand) so I can now use it on T-Mobile. I got the free NokiaFree unlocking calculator and on my second attempt (I messed up royally the first time, using the wrong, site-based calculator) successfully removed the restriction from the phone.

Yes, I can unlock other people's GSM (and GSM only) phones as well, at least all GSM phones supported by NokiaFree's software. This includes basically all GSM Nokias, a lot of Samsungs, some LGs, some Panasonics, Sony\Ericssons and some Siemens phones, as well as some lesser-known models like Vitel, NEC and Maxon. Sorry, there aren't any Motorolas on the list; your black Razr stays on Cingular, at least as far as I can help you.

All you have to do is email me (iansl AT gmail DOT com, symbols replaced to kill spam) with the IME1 number of the phone (serial number, can be found under the battery or usually by pressing *#06# like you're entering a phone number), what make\model of phone it is, and what network it's locked to, and what country you're in. I'll send you all seven or so codes, along with my reccommendation of which to choose first, as most GSM phones only let you have 5 or so unlock attempts before they become un-unlockable by this means.

The only thing I ask in return for the unlocking is that if you don't have the latest version of Firefox, take a minute to download, via the link button on the right, it and the Google Toolbar. If you already have Firefox 1.0.7 (or later; I am using Firefox 1.5 Beta right now) then take a little time to click on a few ads that you find intersting. Thanks.

STi LG 225 Now On CheapPhoneCards!

CheapPhoneCards has finally come out with the LG 225 camera phone. There are two packages that they have. Unfortunately, neither of them have the deep discount that payme25 affords. I hope that CheapPhoneCards will fix that :).

The first deal (the link is the title of this article) is a more normal deal for CheapPhoneCards. For $149 (the price of the phone alone on STi, except that you can't get the phone alone on STi) you get the normal stuff (phone and $10 card) plus a car charger and leather case. They say they're worth $20 ($30 including the card). I say they're worth about $10. Anyway shipping is $5.75 here also, and there's only a 2% coupon (phone2) so you get a whopping $3 off of your otherwise-$154.75 purchase. So yes, the cheapest you can get the LG 225 cameraphone for right now is $151.75, $51.75 with the rebate, $41.75 if you count the card out of being the phone, $31.75 if you count the accessories out, but I wouldn't do that.

The second deal, which the first deal links to (look for Related Deals), gets you for $199 + $5.75 shipping the phone and a $50 card, just like at stimobile.com. Except that they do have a 7% discount coupon (phone7) that brings the total price down to $190.82 or thereabouts. Not a great deal IMO but the phone itself is $40.82 with the rebate this way.

As for me, I'm waiting for my rebate to come in and maybe by that time they will have better deals on the phone, such as maybe being able to apply payme25 to the purchase...

Beyond Wireless: New "Free" Phones

They've discontinued the "Free" 5165 deal (actually it's $6.95 for shipping) when you get a $10 card, but Beyond Wireless now has four "free" phones that you can get with a $10 card, all fulfilled by UsedCellPhone.com. They also have a facep[late store to personalize your Nokia 5165 or 5160 phone, or even your 5185 CDMA or 5190 GSM phone if you have one of those. Anyway, here are the phones that Beyond Wireless\UsedCellPhone are pretty much giving away with a $10 card:

Nokia 5160
On Nokia's Website
On Beyond Wireless's Website

Nokia 6160
On Nokia's Website
On Beyond Wireless's Website

Nokia 6161
On Nokia's Website
On Beyond Wireless's Website

Nokia 6162
On Nokia's Website
On Beyond Wireless's Website

Hope the last link works :)

STi Rehash #1

Okay. CheapPhoneCards is about to release the LG 225 camera phone that STiMobile.com has already released. I'd advise getting it at cheapphonecards when it comes out there simply because you can get a bigger discount (with payme25) and only have to get a $10 card with the phone. Web access and picture messaging should be ready by the end of this month says customer support. But anyway let me rehash what STi is:

1) STi runs on the Sprint PCS network like Virgin Mobile
2) Rates are 12 cents weekdays, 10 cents nights and weekends, or 18 cents 24\7 with free international calling to tons of places
3) Airtime doesn't expire
4) Their phones can be inexpensive (LG 225) or even free (LG 5225) with a rebate
5) Text messaging is 5 cents both ways

Now some extra tidbits for STi\CheapPhoneCards users:
1) The coupon code "payme25" (no quotes) saves 20% off of STi phones; it will also give you an invoice with a normal-looking (no coupon applied) cost for rebate purposes (heh heh)
2) The coupon code "refill8" (again no quotes) takes the discount for STi refill cards from 3% to 11%. So in reality you're paying about 10.7 cents for weekday minutes and 8.9 cents for nights and weekends, even on a $10 card.
3) CheapPhoneCards' reward points system round down to the nearest dollar so you actually pay $8 in reward points (280 points) for a "normally $8.90" ten-dollar STi card.

One word about all this as I wait for my phone to be repaired (for no reason that I can tell my external screen wierded out and my internal screen seems to be suffering a little because of it): sweetmess :).

XE Mobile

This is an interesting carrier running off of Cingular's postpaid (read every GSM in the US) network. Text is free to receive, 10 cents to send. Voice has three different plans, or rather two types of plans, one with two options:

1) 20 cents a minute flat rate
2a) 50 cents per day the phone is used for a voice call, 15 cents outgoing, first 100 incoming minutes per month free, then 10 cents a minute
2b) Same as above except $1 a day the phone is used for a voice call and 250 free incoming minutes per month

The phones are expensive but there is an OK selection. They have the Nokia 2600 and 3200, as well as a the Motorola v180 (aka XEna) and Razr, at $50, $130, $100 and $300 respectively. So if you don't like Tracfone's SingleRate phones, or don't want to hunt for deals all the time, XE Mobile is a good choice.

Tracfone Nokia 1100 - Now $20

You saw it in Wal-Mart for this much. Now it's official: The Tracfone Nokia 1100 SingleRate GSM phone is $20, not bad at all when you consider that with a refer-a-friend promotion (email me) you're getting 120 minutes for that $20...16.66 cents a minute! And it has the coverage of Cingular, or T-Mobile if T-Mobile is in your area and not Cingular, and we're talking the contract plan here.

On a side not my Wal-Mart is selling the Nokia 2285 for around $20 right now as well, probably to move the stock for the new Nokia 2126. One thing I'm wondering here is whether Tracfone has a new phone up their sleeve, such as the long-rumored Nokia 2651 flip, which will push the 1100 out of retail existence for the most part and make the Nokia 2600 into the $30 phone.

Simple Freedom Online Bonus!

Click on the link above to activate a Simple Freedom phone (the Nokia 3587i or 6015i is usually $40 or so at your local Wal-Mart, or you can get the color flip Kyocera SoHo for abiyt $70) and instead of $10 (40 minutes, 20 roaming) you get a whopping $30.01 (don't know where that extra cent is for but 120 minutes nonetheless) credit when you sign up, putting SF on par with a Tracfone with refer-a-friend purchase, except that the Tracfone is usually cheaper for the phone and more expensive for the minutes. But if you want Simple Freedom and the Alltel and Verizon network capability it beings go for it!

SMS Stuff

Two quick things about SMS. Okay, three.

1. I was emailed by the marketing chairman of 4info, yet another SMS service a la Google and Yahoo. The shortcode this time is...what else...4INFO, and it has a few things, like sports scores and random drink (alcoholic) "recipies", that other SMS gateways don't have but personally I find 4info unattractive when compared with, say, Google SMS.

2. With go.blogger.com you can make your very own "Moblog" (Mobile Blog) in as little as one step: send whatever you want to go@blogger.com. Believe it or not, this works on SMS as well, though your entries are short.

3. The alternative to this is Matil-to-Blogger, which lets you send text to a predetermined email address (yourblogname.something@blogger.com) and it show up on the blog. If you can stand lack of confirmation and a few less characters on your message this is good for people who, like me, have annoying cell plans that cost to receive text messages.

STi Phone Fun , Part the Second

First off, STi has finally put another rebate on their site for the LG 5225 phone. It's for the same amount, but you'll have to keep your phone active for 90 days before STi will start processing the rebate, up from 60 before this and 30 from the LG 1200 they used to have. So yeah you sort of have a 3-month contract to get your phone for free but all you need to do is make a call the day you get the phone and then about 30 days later, and then just for kicks a week later and you have, about 60 days later, your 90 required days for activation, and you eventually get your rebate. You don't even need to get another card if you don't want to.

Second: I may have confused the Samsung a660 with the Samsung a560 on what phones STi is going to release soon. The main difference is that the 560 doesn't have web access. I'm pretty sure that I didn't though, and that STi is going to come out with the a660.

Third, and last, is that I am now hearing that STi is going to introduce the well-reviewed, interestingly-built Samsung a600. No, it's not a downgrade from the a660; it's a full-featured cameraphone with a screen that can actually swivel around so the phone can be closed and yet the big screen can still be showing. Yay STi!

Virgin Mobile IM

With the two new phones (tne Kyocera Slider Sonic, which is incidentally not the Slider Remix, and the Audiovox Snapper, or 8915) Virgin Mobile has introduced they gave owners of these phones the gift of chat. More specifically, for $4 a month you get 150 messages on AIM, each subsequent 50-message chunk costing $1 (okay, $3.99 and 99 cents but hey). The AIM client is free. Cheaper than text? Probably. Cheap? Not really. Though you do get the first month's base 150 messages free.

Also, they have this thingamabob called Chat Park, which seems to be some sort of online community type of thing. 60 minutes of time or one week of service, again whichever comes first, is $3. OK...I'll pass on that one too.

To see for yourself go to www.virginmobileusa.com and click on Ringtones and More.

T-Mobile To Go Unlimited Text!

You read the above title right. To get unlimited text on your T-Mobile-To-Go compatible phone (unlocked 1900-band-capable or T-Mobile) follow the below steps. Note that you'll also get minutes at a flat rate of 15 cents. Unfortunately you'll lose T-Zones access (news and such) but you can still check your balance by dialing *999 and hitting SEND (I'm pretty sure that's the number :) ).

1. Get a T-Mobile To Go sim card from a place like boardwalkcommunications.com for about $14.
2. Run it down to below $10. This may or may not be necessary as one person did this at $10.80 so you can try step 3 before this but don't count on the transition working unless the balance is low enough. You can do this by...surprise...texting!
3. call T-Mobile Customer Care and have them convert your sim to the Sidekick To Go plan.

You can now send as many SMSes as you like and not be charged anything. Plus you have voice at a fixed 15 cents per minute. The reason this works is that the Sidekick To Go plan has this as well, except it charges $1 a day. What you get for that $1 is unlimited MMS and web access on your Sidekick, which is also pretty expensive. Anyway the reason you get text for free and no MMS or web is they won't\can't bill you for the Sidekick $1 a day part of the plan if the sim card is not in your Sidekick. The flip side of this, the side that doesn't allow web access, is that the Sidekick uses a different way of sending and receiving data than normal that, for web and MMS, aren't compatible with normal phones.

So you can't use this on your Sidekick if you have one. But you can use it on such text-friendly phones\devices as the ones below:

Motorola v100 (old but good for text, but don't do voice on this one, about $25 shipped)

http://snipurl.com/jjem

Nokia 3300 (it's a music phone too with a color screen, about $55 shipped)

http://snipurl.com/jjep

Have fun with this, especially for AIM over SMS (which works with T-Mobile To Go, or at least this type) and 411sms (I think that Google SMS doesn't work but no huge deal there as 411sms is about as good, just with a 10-digit number)

PagePlus Activation & Phone for Less

One eBay seller now has a PagePlus activation kit for just $10 with the same 100 minutes and 120 days (actually 30 above normal) for any Verizon phone. That's 10 cents a minute, a nice deal if you ask me :). Here is the link (that's the hotlink in the title as well):

http://tinyurl.com/8xl93

He also sells a Kyocara 2325 with 71 minutes of airtime ($10 worth really) for $30. Here is the link to that:

http://tinyurl.com/beneb

Boost Mobile Phone Pricing

Boost Mobile has lowered the prices for some of their phones, making them more available for public consumption without sticker shock. The i835, one of the smallest Nextel\Boost phones available (unfortunately that isn't saying too much compared to other technologies' phones), is now $150, as is the larger i730.

But the best deals are the i450, which is now $80, and the i415, which is $60, making it the cheapest Boost phone ever I think, which again isn't saying much in this era of $30 Nokia 2126s from Tracfone but is great if you want the features Boost Mobile affords. If you look around, you may even be able to find a copy of the "Europe-only" Opera Mini browser, which allows any phone with Java and internet access to view normal webages, albeit downloading everything that PCs would download (don't use this on GoPhone or any other carrier that doesn't have unlimited data).

Another Wierd and Wonderful Hybrid Service: Bravo Cellular

I'm checking into this, but it is similar to INPulse in that for 99 cents a day you get unlimited night and weekend calling. Well, on INPulse you get unlimited night and IN calling but the concept is similar. Bravo uses the Sprint network like STi Mobile does and actually has some of the same phones STi does (LG 5350 and Samsung a460).

Howver, right now they have a promo that gives you unlimited calling for the 99 cents a day fee (I guess until November 1st). Text, as with STi, is 5 cents to send and receive. Bravo touts its international rates but you can find better deals on that elsewhere.

One last thing is that this is a very new service, hence the promo, and also for every daytime minute once they aren't unlimited (12.5 cents) and for the 99 cent daily fee (like INPulse it's whether you use it or not) there's an extra 13% tacked on. OK, if it gives you unlimited calling I'm fine with it...

Buy an INPulse phone and use it on PagePlus

Is there a BustBuy near you? If so, take a look to see if they have the Verizon INPulse Nokia 6015i in stock for $50. If they do, that phone is a prime candidate for PagePlus Cellular, a prepaid provider that runs off of Verizon's home network. Airtime veries from 10 to 14 cents a minute, depending on what denomination of card you buy (you can get them at cheapphonecards.com, see the link to the right), and roaming is 99 cents a minute. Cards last for 120 days, and of course minutes roll over Check on eBay to get an activation with 90 days of service and 100 minutes for $15. There is a 50 cent per month fee (25 cents on the 1st, 25 on the 15th) but still this is a cheap way to get a modern phone that works off of the Verizon network. Or you can get a phone like the Nokia 3589i that has internet and use the internet for free, because of a loophole in the PagePlus service. No tetherting though :)

Beyond Wireless Fun

If you live in an area serviced by AT&T or Cingular's TDMA networks and don't mind getting a long-distance number, Beyond Wireless is still a viable option. Granted, you'll be getting older phones, but older also means cheaper. Right now, there are two promotions going on that will give you "free" (plus $7 or so for shipping) phones when you get a $10 Beyond Wireless card. You can probably activate the phones, then add the $10 card, for a total of 115 minutes for about $17, not a bad deal since it includes a phone in the mix, with no rebates involved. Your choice of phones is either the old-though-still-viable Nokia 5165, which does everything Beyond is good for anyway (voice calling and text messaging) or you can get the older Nokia 5160, if you don't want text messaging at all or the supply of 5165s runs out.

Tracfone Nokia 2126 Update

Sorry folks but the Tracfone Nokia 2126 is not a SingleRate phone. There is the 2x roaming fee and the 1\2 unit to send and receive text messages. It is a nice phone though.

The STi Experience

Firest of all I have to say that a lot of things didn't happen today that I thought would happen. First, no new phones were introduced, and the LG 225 cameraphone did not go live. Second, though text messaging started to be charged, no new services came out. Web, according to the reps, should be out at the end of this week, along with picture messaging.

OK. Now for really why I posted. I sent six text messages and received three today, thinking that they were free, as I didn't immediately get charged for them. As it turned out, there was actually a bug in the system, so the 45 cents was deducted later in the day. I can live with that.

At the time I was sending the text messages I also tried to call my mom's cell phone. As usual it was off, and, as luck would have it, Cellular One decided to give me a busy beep (for which I was charged) instead of the free-for-me "The customer you have called cannot be reached at this time" message. Twelve cents gone. I can live with that too.

Then, somehow, I might've or might've not pressed the 1 key and hit send. I don't think that I did it but there is a chance that I might have. That "One second call" cost me 22 cents. After about 45 minutes on the phone with a pretty helpful STi rep, most of which spent on hold waiting for STi's system to get everything straightened out, the 22 cents was refunded. Heym I didn't have to pay anything for the call (from my cell phone) and spent the hold time working on homework :).

I'm satisfied now. I just hope that they get the kinks worked out of text messaging and out of their accounting system. STi, if you're listening out there, or rather looking, we prepaid people would like an online account viewer like Cingular GoPhone has. Can you get it for us? :)

I maintain (and hope I spelled it correctly) that STi is a fine company to deal with on prepaid service. It is still my favorite. But keep in mind that if you get a text message saying that on X day X service will be charged X amount per X usage, you'd better believe it, though you might think you aren't charged for it at first on X date. Now about phone releases on websites I can't make that written-in-stone generalization, but still...


Discuss at the STi Forum