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.

Net10: w377 Coming Soon

If you're wondering when Net10 will come out with something comparable to the Bluetooth-enabled, hard-plastic-keypad Motorola w376 that is already on Tracfone, the answer is "soon". The Sweeper over on the forums just caught a glance at the Motorola w377, essentially the w376 with a different color scheme, on the Net10 phone activation selector, on the Net10 website. It'll bw a nice addition to Net10's lineup of phones and will probably cost the same as the w375 does now.

TNT Meets VM

Looks like the Kyocera TNT (S200) is finally available, after a long period of vaporware, on Virgin Mobile's online store. Pushing the Marbl (K127) down to $12.99 and the LG Aloha to $9.99, this new phone on the block has looks reminiscent of the non-Virgin Mobile version of the Marbl: the K132 "Velvet". Except this time there's a narrow caller ID display on the soft-touch outside of the phone rather than...um...nothing. The phone also looks a bit higher-end, with styling cues from the Kyocera Deco S1000 such as a rounded-rectangle footprint with a single barrel hinge and big, contigious buttons. Of course, what I just said is simply taken from the photos on Virgin Mobile's website but it still makes for good buzzword bingo, right?

Quick Tracfone Deal

Just as an update to the parade of deals evinced by postings over on the forum, the LG CG225 is now just $59 over at Wal-Mart's online site. Granted, it has been seen for $50 on Tracfone's site, but with Wal-Mart you can get the phone shipped to a store for free, whereas Tracfone shipping deals come and go. Then again, the LG 600g may be worth the extra $20. More on that when I reiew that phone...after I review all of these other phones I have sitting around...after I finish my physics homework tonight.

Yep, it's that time of year again; I'm in school :/

iWireess, Now With More Phones & Plans

Looks like Kroger's Sprint-based iWireless brand is upping the ante a bit on features, making them a viable alternative to one of the mainline carriers (Virgin Mobile comes to mind) for certain applications...

First off, their phone lineup has improved, and all phones now come with $50 in airtime built in, a very nice amount to start off with so you can take full advantage of all the service's features right out of the box, no refill required. The phone pricing actually isn't that bad when you count the $50 in included airtime into the equation, and the variety is better than your typical Sprint-based prepaid:

LG 145 (aka LG 200c on Tracfone) - $50
LG 160 (almost aka Flare on Virgin Mobile) - $70
LG 150 - $80
UTStarCom 7025 - $50
Sanyo Katana II - $120
LG Rumor (finally a nice texting phone on prepaid for a decent price!) - $150

Before you mention it, yes, Kajeet also has the LG Rumor, but at $100 for the phone alone (plus $50 for the included airtime) this deal is a lot better. Plus there's a plan to use it: $19.99 per month gets you unlimited text messaging. Not as good as Virgin Mobile maybe, where $19.99 or even $10 (depending on your plan) gets unlimited messaging of all types, but iWireless' phone is better for the price, with an mp3 player, memory card slot and a non-Kyocera brand name.

iWireless has also redone their rate structure. All refills last 90 days, but that's not the big part....here's the rundown, cheapest per month to most expensive:

1. 25 cent daytime minute with 10 cent nights and weekends starting at 6 p.m. (not a misprint, nights are 6 p.m. on iWireless!)
2. 15 cent anytime minutes, 10 cents per minute extra to Mexico
3. $4.99 per month plus 10 cent anytime minutes
4. $29.99 per month for unlimited nights and weekends starting at 6 p.m. (!), 10 cent minutes at other times

A quick analysis shows that if you use 100 minutes or more per month, the $5 a month plan is best. If you use mostly night and weekend minutes (2x or more as many as weekday minutes) the 25/10 plan is good up until 300 minutes per month. Or if you use 100 anytime minutes and 250 night and weekend minutes (or more) the $29.99 a month fee pays for itself. I like math ;)

EDITED: So, in short, you have a very good wireless service rate-wise with a few unique features (nights starting at 6 p.m.) and several decent phones to choose from (mostly LG) at a reasonable price. You can get them online (contrary to what I said before, thanks to offthegrid for correcting my egregious error) and the list of stores where they're available is rather large: King Sooper's, Kroger, Fry's (food, not electronics), Smith's, CItyMarket, Dillons, Ralphs, Food4Less, FredMeyer or QFC. Betcha the same company owns all of 'em.

But if you can, in many cases it's a better option than Virgin Mobile (free incoming texts, nights starting at 6 p.m., better phones, cheaper 10-cent rate plan, cheaper per-minute rate plan) or STi Mobile (better phones, better night-and-weekend plan, etc.). I've already recommended the service to a friend who has Virgin, and he may very well switch, since a King Sooper's isn't too far away here in Colorado.

Net10 Intros 1-year and 2-year Cards

Want a "set it and forget it" cell phone service that works anywhere and doesn't take $3-ish out of your balance every month? Looks like Net10 takes the cake here, though Tracfone comes close with its now-infinitely stackable airtime (Net10 also has infinitely stackable airtime)...

You see, Net10 now has 1-year and 2-year cards (thanks to The Sweeper for pointing 'em out!) at $200 and $400 respectively. Yes, they cost more than the early termination fee on a cellular contract, however these $200 or $400 fees actually give service for a year or two, instead of being the penalty for giving up service before a year (or two) is up.

The one-year card gives 2000 minutes, at the usual Net10 10 cents per minute face value. Like the $100 6-month card you get a total cost of $16.67 per month plus tax on the service, assuming you don't use up any minutes over the 2000 in one year. The two-year card, which has the same monthly cost, includes 1000 "bonus" minutes, lowering the rate per minute to a mere eight cents, with no other work required. This isn't as good as the $75-a-month 1000-minute plan also available from Net10, but the cost per month is much, MUCH less with the two-year card, and eight-cent calling with four-cent text messages is hard to beat even on a "real" contract.

Though of course if you buy one of these cards, you just made Tracfone very happy; $200 or $400 is more than enugh to subsidize the phone that you're using with their service, making a phone plus a one- or two-year card a decidedly non-loss-leader product.

But hey, this is a rather innovative, quite inexpensive per-month and per-minute development, so I'm all for it. Oh, and it's one less bill or refill to worry about...for two years!

XSPCS & Movida Nights @ 7 pm

Yes yes I know I need to get some phone reviews up here but I have another rather large project I have to work on at the moment, so maybe tomorrow...

Anyhow, the newest Sprint reseller (or one of the newest; it appears to have been started in the winter of 2007) on the block is KDDI, the Japanese cellular carrier who has decided to call their service X/S PCS Mobile. You know, like X for eXtreme and S PCS for Sprint PCS? Anyhow, these guys have a slightly different mix of plans versus the average Sprint based MVNO, though under the friendly cartoon penguins nothing is too appealing.]

First off you have the phone seleciton: the LG 125 and 225 (seen 'em before everywhere), the Sanyo 2400 (halway decent but rather old)...and something resembling a modern, high-tech phone, the LG 350! The darned thing has Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera and an external display. No EvDO (not missed; X/S PCS Mobile doesn't have data support at all) but it can print pictures via Pictbridge, provided you have the right cable and a relatively modern printer.

Second, you have the availability: none online from a quick search, but it appears as though 6th Avenue Electronics and New Jersey Cumberland Farms locations have the phone. Refills are available anywhere Coinstar products are sold, which doesn't include places like (one of our sponsors, click the ad if you please) BabbleBug.com.

The rates? Not great. All refills, even the $10 card, have the distinction of giving you 45 days of service time, however per-minute rates aren't anything to write home about in this age of sub-10-cent minutes: depending on the airtime card you get, rates vary from 11.1 to 12 cents per minute. The cheapest refill is, naturally, the largest ($50) however the most expensive one is the $30 refill but about a tenth of a cent!

But that's the regular plan...

A happy sunglassed penguin points out another X/S PCS Mobile (mouthful eh?) plan: unlimited incomiung. A $60 card, good for 30 days of service and 400 minutes outgoing, gets your service startedd (phones come with 80 minutes of service preloaded). Cheaper cards are available, but their expirations are so abysmal that the only card making monetary sense in this system is the $60 one. If any other card is chosen, you might as well just get an unlimited incoming and outgoing plan from Virgin Mobile, who runs on the same network, for $80 per month. Discounting incoming minutes and assuming you wanted to buy such cards, airtime rates vary from 13.9 to 15 cents per minute on the lower denomination cards; 15 cents per minute is the airtime rate on both $30 and $60 cards, with $50 again being cheapest.

In short, X/S PCS Mobile is only good for a VERY small and specialized group of people: those who don't use a ton of outgoing minutes but use enough incoming minutes (800+ by my calculation per month) to make unlimited incoming calling cheaper and more compelling than a product on the same network from a different provider.

In other news, Movida has added an option to their "Max Plus" plan: for $3 additional per month nights and weekends can start at 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m. This welcome option makes sense if even sixteen minutes of airtime are used in a month between 7 and 9 p.m., assuming those minutes would push you over what's essentially a contract-less "normal" cell phone plan with rollover minutes (don't sue me AT&T).

Slash Price Drop

The Sweeper over at the forums just pointed out that Virgin Mobile has dropped the price of their Samsung m310 "Slash" phone by $10, to $69.99. It's unclear whether this is a permanent price drop, but you'd think so. The Slash is a decent phone (need to review it, have it sitting on my desk right now) but its price is significantly more than the Arc, which has similar features. This price drop brings things more in line, price-wise.

Go4Prepaid Turns 700, GoPhone Launches Breeze To Commemorate

Okay, so maybe they didn't launch the Pantech Breeze to commemorate this, the 700th post on Go4Prepaid (wow, that's a lot! Now to get to 1000). However the phone is available on GoPhone now, albeit at a rather shocking $100.

But hey, it does have Bluetooth and a camera so you can't knock the phone too much, though I don't see the camera anywhere on the phone picture. No wait, there it is, on the backside of the phone, near the battery and the speakerphone grill. It's back there because there's plenty of space back there, and there's plenty of space back there because the phone is rather big. The phone is rather big because it's aimed at older folks, with big buttons and big screens, plus a few dedicated "In Case of Emergency" buttons right below the main screen.

Verizon has the CDMA version of this phone, which they call the Coupe, and they sell it for $40 with a contract. Guess it might not be such a bad deal on GoPhone after all...

BabbleBug's Phone Lineup

You may or may not know, depending on whether this is your first time here or not, that BabbleBug.com is one of the big reasons I can afford to buy (and eventually review) all these cell phones. They, and a little bit of Google advertisers, also pay for my regular (contract based 'cuz I need high-speed data on a very high-end phone and AT&T 3G isn't available where I live in Texas) cellular service and maybe a candy bar every once in awhile.

That said, BabbleBug also sells some decent products, namely calling cards, SIM card kits, prepaid phone airtime and prepaid phones themselves. Here's their lineup right now, without the "99 cent"...um...BS:

SIM Kits (all of them use AT&T's network and come with $1 in rewards that you can put toward future BabbleBug purchases)
AirVoice: $8 (unknown credit included)
GoPhone (AT&T "house brand"): $10 ($10 credit included)
Oxygen Wireless: $5 (50 minutes credit included)

Phones (include rewards equivalent to 1% of purchase price, except where noted)
Oxygen Motorola c168i: $50
Oxygen Motorola Razr: $120
Oxygen Pantech c300: $110
Page Plus LG vx4500: $30 ($3 in rewards included)
Page Plus LG vx6100: $40 ($3 in rewards included)
PowerLink semi-unlimited (see the post in the forums) LG 150: $75
PowerLink LG 5225: $70
PowerLink Nokia 6165: $90
Total Call Mobile LG 5225: $35
Total Call Mobile Nokia 3588i: $20
Total Call Mobile Samsung a660: $30
Total Call Mobile Samsung a300: $120

Reviews for some of these phones are on this site, while others have reviews that'll come in time. At any rate, if you want to buy any of this stuff, look to your right and scroll down; the link to BabbleBug is right there :)

LG 600, Super Slice Blue

Looks like the LG 600 camera flip Bluetooth external-screen phone is finally out; The Sweeper has gotten ahold of it and has a few pictures to show. I'll get it eventually, but only after I get all these phones I have sitting around reviewed!

View post

Also, it looks like there are now four colors of Super Slice floating around, black (normal), white (RadioShack), red (BestBuy) and blue (special edition). Geesh, you can change a phone's color but the phone will still have a UTStarCom brand name on it...hmm...that was a mixed metaphor to end all mixed metaphors. Anyhow, check the post out here. Note that you still can't get the Super Slice online, at least you can't right now (it was available awhile back though).

T-Mobile, AT&T Phone Lineup Update

Looks like T-Mobile's two new prepaid phones, the Nokia 1208 and 2760, are available online for purchase now. The 1208 is $30, the 2760 is $90 (!). The Nokia 2610 is still available for $30, and the Samsung t219 and t429 are available for $50 and $100, respectively. You can also get the Motorola v195 for $30. No great deals here, just an update.

As for AT&T's GoPhone service, you can still get the Nokia 2610 for $25 with $25 in airtime, $40 with $50 in airtime or $80 with $100 in airtime. Or get the phone alone for $8, refurbished. The rather high-end Motorola v365 is also available, refurbished, for $60. You can also get the Sony Ericsson Walkman w580i, refurbished, in black or pink, for $100. Otherwise you're loking at AT&T's typical, though large, GoPhone lineup and pricing handset-wise.

Yes, I know, I have lots of phones to review, and in response to the silent question of when a review will come up, I have a Nokia 2610 sitting beside me for that very purpose. A 2610 that, mind you, was paid for by the site's sponsors, most likely by BabbleBug. So pay them a visit; they're what make these reviews possible.