Yay 18!

Yep, I'm officially an adult...

Now, back to the news...

Boost Mobile Intros i290

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

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

Forums Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kajeet Offers $70 Plan/Phone Rebate

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

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

Pretty good deal if you want a Kajeet phone.

More Cell phone Deal Info

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

Again, check it out here.

T-Mobile and TuYo updates

On the T-Mobile front, a few things have changed on the phone lineups. The Samsung t109, a basic phone, is $50. The nokia 1680, a camera bar phone, is the same price. Currently T-Mobile has a promotion, however, that'll give you an extra $10 at activation, $10 after a month of service and $10 after another month of service, presumably in addition to the usual $15 in activation credit you get with a t-Mobile To Go phone, though I might be wrong about that last bit.

On TuYo, the largest t-Mobile reseller, you've got a Sony Ericsson z310a (review coming sometime in the future) for $90 (ech), the Motorola w220 for $50 (meh) and the Nokia 1208 (review coming eventually) for $30 (hmm). Rates are good, though; text messaging is a scant five cents per message at this point. You can also, for $5, get no-extra-charge calling to Mexico, Hondouras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Finally, Club MAX is out, a loyalty program that is at least halfway decent. $50 in refills gets you a $5 bonus, another $50 gets you another 45, another $100 gets you another $10 and a final $100 gets you $20 additional added onto your account.

At that point, you're a TuYo VIP. Problem is, I'm not quite sure what that means. The website isn't set up to tell you, either. What I did find out though is that, for $3 per month, you can get 100 text messages per month, a decent discount from the already-cheap 5 cents per message on pay-per-use texting.

Gophone Loyalty Program Shrinks

In these troubled economic times (drink) AT&T is lowering the value of its Gophone program for people who have been on the service for awhile. This comes on the heels of turnig their "unlimited" $20/month data plan into a 100 MB/month plan, which is only enough for non-smartphones...just like AT&T likes it.

The change: after your first $100 refill 9where you'll get $5 as a bonus) you'll get $10 per $100 added. This is in contrast to the current program, which steps up to $15 and eventually $20, depending on how much money you give AT&T.

Of course, not many people knew about this loyalty program, but dumbing it down doesn't help AT&T's case, especially if Verizon decides to keep Alltel's U Prepaid system around after the impending merger.

Tracfone Sweepstakes!

Nope, I'm not dead. Just have been very busy, and there hasn't been too much prepaid news lately. I think I'll do some phone reviews over the break...which will be starting in a little over 18 hours for me...but until then

TRACFONE SWEEPSTAKES!

Thanks to The Turk, it has been brought to my attention that Tracfone is giving five winners per month, for the next twelve months, Visa gift cards of various values: $500, $250, $100, $75 and $30. Nothing to sneeze at, especially 1st through 3rd prizes.

You don't have to have a Tracfone to enter the drawing, though you do have to fill out a short questionnaire about the phone plan you're on right now (oddly enough, Sprint isn't listed in the carrier selection dropdown, so I had to select Other). You can enter once per day, and anyone 13 or older can join the fun.

Nothing to lose, so far as I can tell. I'd say enter early, enter often!

Boost Intros i776, drops pricing to 10c/minute

Just so everyone knows, I'm still alive and kicking. Just ridiculously busy and\or a bad time manager. But to the news...

Boost Mobile has now lowered their talking rates so that now all calling is 10 cents per minute. Previously, only night\weekend\mobile-to-mobile calls were charged at this rate, and everything else was double. This leaves AT&T GoPhone as the only prepaid that has a really expensive per-minute plan, weighing in at a whopping 25 cents per minute, though VIrgin Mobile's per-minute plan is close, at 20 cents per minute, with the option to get a lot cheaper.

Note however that text messages are now charged 10 cents per message to send and receive, unless you upgrade to the $1/day plan, which includes unlimited mobile-to-mobile, texting and nights\weekends.

The other announcement: the Motorola i776. The usual features are there (GPS, Walkie Talkie, large chunky clamshell formfactor...which is slowly getting smaller...), as well as Bluetooth, a camera and a decently descriptive external display. The price, at $100, is a little on the high side for such a phone, however it's nice to again have a reasonably high-end phone on Boost's iDEN service again.

Page Plus Intros "New" Phones

Looks like Page Plus has come into 2006 or so; in addition to the old LG vx6100 ($60), the vx3200 ($20) and the vx4500 ($40), they now have the LG vx3300 (vx3200 + removable faceplates), the Motorola e815 (great phone, $60), the Motorola v710 (good phone, $70) and the Razr v3c ($90). Prices have been rounded up by 5 cents for readability, and I have to say that this is a small step in the right direction for Page Plus. But they do have two more years to go, at least, in phone models, before they're on par with...well...the phones that people actually use on contract carriers today.

Trac Hack - 300 extra minutes

Looks like there's currently a trick you can use to get 320 minutes when activating a Tracfone instead of 20. See here:

http://s7.zetaboards.com/Go4Prepaid/topic/8023074/1/

Tracfone LG 600g = Bluetooth-ness

Looks like we've got double-confirmation that the Tracfone LG 600g, so far their most advanced phone, can do Bluetooth file transfers. So if you're into that sort of thing and want a phone that uses all of AT&T's contract-class network, this is it...

Motorola w377 on HSN

No, the Net10 Motorola w377 does NOT have a 3.0 megapixel camera or video recording capabilities like HSN's website says, but it is a halfway-decent deal, at $100 for both the phone and a Bluetooth headset.

Virgin Mobile Changes Kickback Policy

Effective Tuesday (but only reaching my inbox today), Virgin Mobile has made a few changes to their Kickbacks program.

Instead of money ($10 if I remember correctly) it's now more like the Tracfone refer-a-friend plan of yore: you get minutes, they get minutes. 60 minutes, to be exact. Worthless if you have an unlimited plan, but awesome if you would otherwise pay 20 cents per minute.

The limit on referrals has also been increased, to 100 (!) per year. You heard me right: you could conceivably get 6000 minutes per year (500 per month) through Virgin Mobile referrals. Every person referred does have to activate online and add $20 or more to their account within 45 days, but that's still a nice deal. One more thing: you have to register for the promotion to get your referral code, which can be posted wherever. More private than a phone number, so "wherever" really does mean wherever.

To that tune, I'll be putting up a referral code up here the next time I review a phone. That way if you want an extra 60 minutes upon activation of your Virgin Mobile phone, you can get it. Information on the kickback program (with Go4Prepaid as the referrer) will be posted on the sidebar here once I get around to it.

Shuttles and Data Plans and Service Days, Oh My!

Nope, this may be post 711, but the Shuttle isn't available at 7-Eleven stores...yet...it'll be coming to BestBuy with a price of either $80 or $100l, looks like.

Thanks to The Sweeper, nothing has gone unnoticed over at the Virgin Mobile HQ. Least of all their introduction of the Stereo-Bluetooth, music-playing, MicroSD-toting, rootin' tootin' red slider phone known as the Shuttle. Check out Virgin Mobile's page on it here. The Shuttle also has a page or two from Helio's book (they're part of Virgin Mobile now, remember?): Buddy Beacon GPS location. Very, very cool. Short of a keyboard, this phone has every feature a non-smartphone user on a contract plan could want.

Virgin Mobile has also introduced new data plans to the arena, making them pretty competitive in that realm (though they don't have an "unlimited" option like AT&T's GoPhone does). $10 gets you 20 MB of data usage, $20 gets 50MB. VirginXL usage (ringtones and such from Virgin Mobile's own system) don't count against the limit, and if you have a monthly plan data costs are halved. If you don't have a monthly plan, the $5 for 5 MB monthly plan still stands. Virgin Mobile has also increased the minimum amount for pay-per-use data from $1 to 1.50 for a day pass, but the data allotment has been increased from 500 KB to 1 MB.

What's interesting is that now an unlimited voice plan with unlimited messaging is $90, just like on Sprint, and 50 MB of data brings the monthly total up to $100. Granted, 50 MB of data isn't 5 GB (Sprint's soft cap) but for casual mobile web usage you won't go over 50 MB even on an EvDO-equipped phone (not that I said casual web uage, not putting music or video into the equation), plus Virgin Mobile's plan taxes and fees are less than Sprint's. So yes, you can get away with more and more these days on a prepaid plan, and if you're looking for a feature-rich experience with unlimited voice minutes Virgin mobile is it.

One thing: if you look at the title bar on your browser when browsing Virgin Mobile's data plan apge, it mentions 2G data. The Shuttle is 3G. Are there even better plans coming?

One more thing: if you buy a Wild Card, Slash or Shuttle from Virgin Mobile you, for a limited time, can get a full year of service when you activate. It looks like you have to add some sort of airtime card to the mix in order to do this, but that card could be as little as $10, and a year of service included with the phones is a goodway to keep people around and use all those high-end features the Shuttle (which will be out on the 28th, looks like) has to offer.

In conclusion, Virgin Mobile's red-rimmed slider phone brings the provider up in my estimation in compparison of all cellular providers, contract as well as prepaid.

The Shuttle Has Landed

Looks like Virgin Mobile is coming out with the UTStarCom 8954, or Shuttle, soon. It's a slider phone and is rumored to have music and camera capabilities. It'll probably be in the $100 range and looks to be a replacement for the old Slider Sonic from Kyocera. The cost will likely be around $100. More info when tit comes out...

AT&T Intros Samsung a137, Gives Out Handsets to Gustav Refugees

A&T is at it again. Among the new handsets aailable on their GoPhone prepaid service (Samsung a727, Nokia 2610 in silver, Sony Ericsson z750a etc.) is the Samsung a137. A smooth-looking non-camera-phone, the little guy, like the LG Flare on Virgin mobile, supports Bluetooth and has dual color displays. The price: $40.

In other news, AT&T is giving out (or probably has given out...the program started Tuesday) two hoursand Gophone handsets, each preloaded with 15 minutes of airtime, to victims of Hurricane Gustav. Not a huge loss, as 15 minutes of airtime is much less than what they typically hand out with new phone purchases, but it's a nice gesture and a phone with a little bit of airtime is better than no phone, right?

Boost Intros i776, Free Directions to Reboost Locations

Looks like Boost Mobile is actually expanding their handset lineup now. Dennis from wapreview.com (who has incidentally come upon an invite code to the awesome Skyfire mobile browser, good until August 30th) tipped me to the presence of the Motorola i776 on Target's website. No price, no online and no in-stock message for stores anywhere near me (to be expected) but it's coming. Engadget doesn't like it, but really you have to give Sprint\Motorola credit: it's a nice phone on what is, for Sprint anyway, a dying technology. The i776, like the i875 that Boost used to sell, has a lot of features (camera, Bluetooth, external color screen) though there are no external music controls on this one. But at least there's something available better than, say, the i855 (no Bluetooth) or the i355 (no camera).

According to Sprint's own roadmap, the phone will probably come out next month (Q4 '08), which isn't too bad. I'd say the phone will run about $100 on Boost Mobile, who is now subsidizing their phones at least a little, as oppoed to the days of yore when you could get a top-of-the-line i885...for $400.

So if you must have walkie-talkie and GPS Boost will soon have a more feature-rich, if not attractive, phone for ya.

Speaking of GPS, looks like Boost will allow use of its turn-by-turn directions software for free...if you're looking for a place to reboost. Of course, the only benefit to this is if you either don't have a credit card (in which case you would be able to add airtime to your phone by dialing *ADD) or you're looking for a random convenience store somewhere nearby, which you may or may not get with the Reboost locator. Stll, it's a nice touch.