Help me stop being a cellphone neo-Luddite

[UstadKhanAli]

My girlfriend and a couple of my friends keep bugging me to join the 21st Century and get a cellphone. I've never had one before (I'm seemingly the only person in the U.S. who has never had a cellphone). They mentioned that Verizon has some prepaid cellphones that I should consider. I know nothing about this stuff and it boggles my mind how many different plans and cellphones there are out there.

 

If I do decide to do this, I'd want a cellphone that just calls and has a charge that lasts a long time. I don't care about whether it plays MP3s or takes photos or whatever. I'd prefer a slightly larger phone, if possible - I have large hands and find many people's cellphones too small. Prepaid sounds great, from what I understand. It must be EASY TO USE. If it has a loud ringer, that's a bonus.

 

Do you have any suggestions for phones or whatever it is I'm supposed to be looking for?

[audioicon]

Hate to change the subject but you remind of the days when I was just getting into computer recording, I was very perplexed and honestly hated it.

 

To your question, just watch out for the fine print and traps in the contracts and you'll be okay.

 

Audioicon

[offramp]

 

If I do decide to do this, I'd want a cellphone that just calls and has a charge that lasts a long time. I don't care about whether it plays MP3s or takes photos or whatever.

 

 

Good luck with that. Manufacturers see some need to cram 600 toys into a tiny little box.

There is a company that manufactures a sort of 'Kosher' phone, with only the features you describe, but I've not been able to find it.

[blue2blue]

It's nice when you can see the screen in the sunlight.

 

When they switched to color screens, readability went WAY down.

 

Some phones have amazingly bad menu structures -- and that can vary even inside a given manufacturer. Some carriers have better coverage than others in some areas but there is a real divergence in phone quality, too. Meaning some folks on a given carrier can talk in some buildings/areas while others cannot. Not sure how you figure out what's what, there, though...

[UstadKhanAli]

Well, if it must have all that crap on there, it must. But easy to use, long battery life, prepaid...those are the truly important things to me. If it has a loud ringer and is slightly larger, that's a bonus.

 

~~~~

 

I think Verizon's prepaid plan is out. 99 cent/day activation fee...why would I want that if I want a prepaid cellphone for occasional use? That's about thirty dollars a month whether I use the phone or not.

[UstadKhanAli]

TracPhone or Net10 Wireless seem more reasonable, but I don't know anything about them...

 

Who knows.

[angstwulf]

Don't do it. When the end of civilisation comes, I guarantee that it will have something to do with cell phones, we will need brave souls like you to tell future generations of our folly.

 

In all seriousity, go around to one of those places that sell for more than one carrier and ask the sales person for a stripped down phone that covers your needs. Be prepared for disbelief, denial, anger, acceptance and a then a bit of a wait as the sales person claims that none exist (which may be true), try to make you see the error of your ways and then finally pull out something that doesn't have a crap-load of toys.

 

If you are like me (I held out until I needed one for work) you will probably not use many minutes. Go for the cheapest plan and do not get a warranty or replacement plan (not worth it), text or internet service or any other of their tack ons and you should be able to get a good plan for close to $30 a month that will still have a heck of a lot of minutes.

 

Oh, and pretend to your girlfriend that you can't remember your new phone number for as long as you can hold out. You'll thank me for that.

 

Laters,

Tommy

[the stranger]

 

TracPhone or Net10 Wireless seem more reasonable, but I don't know anything about them... Who knows.

 

 

Cingular prepaid (gophone/pay as you go) is the best deal. I rarely ever use more than a $15 card a month.

 

 

GoPhone Pay As You Go Pay As You Go is wireless made easy. Simply pay in advance for what you need. No long-term contracts, credit checks or surprise bills - just all the benefits of wireless, with no complications. - Rollover

[the stranger]

No, I don't work for them. I'm just really pleased with the plan and the results I've had.

 

The cheapest starter phone (Motorola) is like $25 and doesn't have all the extras, but it does do text messages, you get voice mail service, and you get a $10 starter card...

[philbo]

Dude!! Stay a cellphone virgin!! Don't go seeking an expensive way to add complication to your life!

 

If you have to, my 'anti-getting-boned advice' is don't sign up for those year-long contracts. Get one that is prepaid, for stated duration. Then renew it if it works for you. Those phones don't have all the bull{censored} layers of menus, lame-ass video games, alarm clocks, garage-door openers and other useless but expensive crap that are in pretty much every other cell phone.

[rasputin1963]

Cellphones are wa-a-ay overrated. Most kids think holding them to their ears in public is proof-positive that they're popular; after age 35, they just look stupid and self-indugent. in the UK, drivers are fined if they're caught speaking on their cells whilst driving. In the States, you still see fat cow soccer moms chatting away while they drive like menaces 'cause they have their head up their SUV asses.

The software within my cellphone is so counter-intuitive.... it leads you down any number of logical blind alleys. It has lots of stupid {censored} within it that even the most bored high school student wouldn't want to {censored} with.

And how many American men have tiny little fingers for negotiating those buttons?

And we won't even get into signal break-up.

[deepblue]

Prepaid sucks. Cost's money if tou get someones voice mail/answering machine

[UstadKhanAli]

Prepaid sucks. Cost's money if tou get someones voice mail/answering machine

 

So it doesn't if you have a "reg'lar" calling plan? I know sometimes in posts, things look funny and can be misconstrued, but I know nothing about plans, so this is actually a serious question!!!

[UstadKhanAli]

Cellphones are wa-a-ay overrated. Most kids think holding them to their ears in public is proof-positive that they're popular; after age 35, they just look stupid and self-indugent.

 

Hmmmm...well, I'm not interested in looking popular, stupid, OR self-indulgent, so maybe I should get a pager?

 

Obviously, people driving with cellphones big the s**t out of me. But something that merely annoys me is...well, I don't know if I've just noticed this in the past 2-3 months or what, but I now regularly see people walking around, leaving those things on their ear that makes them look like a Borg (I cannot for the life of me remember what they're called even though I knew what they were called last week...). Is this a new phenomenon, am I simply slow to notice this, or are we being slowly taken over by alien beings?

 

I'm derailing my own thread. I'll have to get mad at myself later.

 

Thanks to everyone for all the advice about prepaid cellphones.

[philbo]

So it doesn't if you have a "reg'lar" calling plan? I know sometimes in posts, things look funny and can be misconstrued, but I know nothing about plans, so this is actually a serious question!!!

 

The deal is:

Prepaid is a measured service. Use a certain amount of air time, you use up a certain amount of your prepaid time (though details do vary).

 

Almost all year (or two year) contracts allow you a certain amount of 'free' air time. It's not really free, you pay a fixed monthly amount (mine is $45/month, up to 700 minutes of air time with no extra charges). If you go over that amount of time, additional calls get very expensive very quickly. But you are definitely paying for every millisecond of air time. The difference is whether the marketing/sales people succeeded in making it look 'free' by rolling it into your monthly cost.

 

One other item, especially if you travel, is roaming charges. If you leave the local area you live in, using your cell phone can get crazy expensive, because you end up paying rent to use an 'alien' companys cell tower services.

 

Example: I visited central florida twice last summer, and roaming charges (added onto my regular bill) for calls made during that time ran around $500 for about 4 total weeks spent there. (Doh!) So, if this is a concern, it'd be worth trying to find a plan that had nationwide roaming. It'll cost a bit more though.

[digibird]

Trust your own instincts more than the expectations of others. If you don't want a cell phone, don't have one.

 

I don't have a cell because I have no need or desire to be available all the time. Cell phones are an intrusion and a nuisance, not a convenience.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

"Hi, where are you?"

[MikeRivers]

 

My girlfriend and a couple of my friends keep bugging me to join the 21st Century and get a cellphone. I've never had one before (I'm seemingly the only person in the U.S. who has never had a cellphone). They mentioned that Verizon has some prepaid cellphones that I should consider. I know nothing about this stuff and it boggles my mind how many different plans and cellphones there are out there. If I do decide to do this, I'd want a cellphone that just calls and has a charge that lasts a long time. I don't care about whether it plays MP3s or takes photos or whatever. I'd prefer a slightly larger phone, if possible

My heart goes out to you, Ken. I was happy with the service and phone that I got about six years ago and would have continued with it except that AT&T/Cingular/AT&T quit using the network that my original phone used. While they could continue the same service I had, I needed to get a new phone. You may have seen my moanings and groanings here about not being able to find a new phone that looks and feels like a phone and wasn't too small or too complicated (and too expensive).

 

First off, I use a prepaid service. I'm not one of those people who are on the phone all the time. At home, I might make two or three calls a week (usually related to business) and might receive one or two. I mostly use my cell phone when I travel, to tell someone I need to meet or that I'm on my way to see where I am and when I'll be there. If I actually have to conduct business by phone and will be talking for more than a minute or two, I'll wait until I find a real phone.

 

The plan that I have lets me call anywhere I can get a signal, days, nights, weekends, local, or long distance in the US, for a quarter a minute. There are other plans with a lower per-minute cost but with other fees that make the actual cost of use less predictable (like ten cents a minute but a buck for every day that you use the phone). I can send them $100 once a year, get 400 minutes in the bank (any unused minutes roll over, and I never come close to using my paid-for time) and have service when I need it. T-Mobile has a similar plan, as does Verizon but V's is more expensive on an annual basis for someone who doesn't use all the time available. You need to keep these prepaid accounts fed (you can do it on a monthly or quarterly basis if you don't want to pay for a year in advance) in order not to lose your investment.

 

Now, about the phone. Accounts with a contract ($39.95/month for two years, for example) guarantee the phone company enough money from you so that they can afford to give, or practically give you a phone. With a prepaid account, they don't have that guarantee, so you pretty much have to pay the real price for your phone. Typically they'll offer a cheap phone for a low price or as part of the initial setup charge. But as you've observed, they're all too tiny and too complicated.

 

SIDEBAR: Just about all cellular networks today use a SIM (Subscriber Information Module, I tihnk) card which is like a memory card that says who you are, what your phone number is, and what service you have. This goes into a slot in the phone.

 

Most phones that you get from the company from which you buy service, are "locked" in their firmware (not the SIM card) which only allows them to work on the network that's designated on the SIM. This is one way that they keep you hooked. But phones can be unlocked. Some are easy (you enter a secret code from the keypad), some require connection to a computer and entering the secret code on the computer. You can also buy an unlocked phone that will work on any network with the appropriate SIM card installed, but these tend to be expensive. You'll find them on eBay.

 

There are a number of web sites that offer unlocking services, and that was the key to my eventual phone happiness.

SIDEBAR off

 

So, I took the new phone that Cingular gave me (actually I had to pay $40 for it, and they sent me a $40 rebate), and after spending a frustrating week with it, took it back to the store asking if they could find me a phone that's more like a phone. After a lot of whining and complaining and overloading the nice salesman with questions, he traded it for the next most expensive phone at no additional cost (and I still got the rebate) and that was a little better, but still not satisfactory.

 

There simply are not new phone-like phones made any more except the Jitterbug which made me feel like an invalid. So I started haunting the local FreeCycle board, hoping to find someone who had an old school phone that still worked and that they had replaced with a more modern one. After a couple of months, I finally found one. It was a reasonable form factor, but it was a T-Mobile phone.

 

However, it was one (a Nokia) that could be unlocked from the keypad, so I gambled $5 with a web site that offered the service, sent them the model and serial number of the phone, and an hour later had an e-mail with the secret unlock code and instructions for entering the data. I followed the instructions, put in my Cingular SIM card, and bingo! It came up with the Cingular logo and worked fine, though showed symptoms of a dead battery. I bought a new battery for $11, and I'm a happy boy.

 

So here's the approach that I'd suggest, and this may take a while. Check with the phone companies and find a prepaid plan that seems reasonable to you. T-Mobile will give you a SIM-only account where they don't give you a phone, just an account and a SIM card that you can put into a T-Mobile or unlocked phone. The other companies may offer the same thing if you ask the right questions.

 

While you're doing that, be on the lookout for a phone that you can stand. Maybe your girlfriend has had her service long enough to have replaced her phone and has kept an old one that's unlockable. Or check your local recycling resources. Check this web site for info on which phones can be unlocked and how. Find a phone that you can unlock and that you can stand to use.

 

When it all comes together, you'll have a reasonably low tech phone and cell phone service that doesn't cost much if you only use it occasionally.

 

As I was typing this, I was hearing Marketplace on the radio, and they reported that people are making fewer calls on their cell phones this year than last year, so maybe there's hope for the world.

[MikeRivers]

So it doesn't if you have a "reg'lar" calling plan? I know sometimes in posts, things look funny and can be misconstrued, but I know nothing about plans, so this is actually a serious question!!!

There's no free lunch. I you get a contract plan, you get a specified number of minutes for the monthly price. You get "free" time with some plans, but that only means that if you have, say 500 minutes/month on your plan, you can talk for 800 minutes without going "over" if 300 of those minutes are during the "free" hours. Most contract plans add a fairly hefty chunk of money to your monthly bill if you use more time than you have "in the bank" for that month. That's why most people eventually contract for more time than they actually use.

 

With a prepaid plan, when you run out of minutes, you can't make or receive any more calls until you feed it again. But as long as you continue feeding it, the unused time remains in the bank, at least with the Cingular plan that I have. I look at the cost on an annual basis rather than on a per-call or monthly basis. If you buy time in $10 chunks, you need to refill monthly, so that's $120/year. But if you buy it in $25 chunks, that lasts 90 days, so it's $100/year minus a couple of days. Or if you buy a $100 chunk, it's good for a year. And now and then, Cingular gives you some bonus time if you buy $100 worth (like 450 minutes rather than the 400 that you'd get at the nominal quarter a minute).

 

If you really use your phone a lot, a prepaid service is more expensive than a contract. But if you really expect to be a light user, a prepaid plan is much cheaper - $100/year vs. $360/year ($29.95/month with no "overages"). I figured I'd try the prepaid service first and if I found that I needed more time than what $100/year would buy me, I'd switch to a contract plan. But I haven't found that to be a good deal based on my usage.

[Kendrix]

Ken, Dont do it!!!

 

Like yourself, i have never owned a cell. (The rest of my family does). I simply refuse to participate.

You and I are now part of a very elite class of individuals who get to live life without being interrrupted every 5 minutes with some inane texting or the like. Why would you relinquish this lofty position?

 

Seriously, based on the experiences opf family and friends I truly hate the business practices cell phone service providers inflict on their customers. Signed contracts with lots of fine print. Huge cancellation fees. You get screwed if you go over your plan allottments. They effectively force you to buy new "phones" that dont meet the requiements of someone like yourself that just wants a simple phone. They all seem to want to be your combo PDA, itunes player, internet access device, camera and cell phone.

 

Im holding out a while longer. So far my life seems to be able to flow along without this. Besides, isnt there some debate about whether or not they cause brain cancer??

[HCarlH]

A cellphone is a MUST in LA. If your car breaks down on the 110, you don't want homeboy coming to hold you up...you need help ASAP.

 

Cingular overcharged me so they can go to hell.

 

In my experience, Verizon works great in the LA area....I am the most happy with them of the 3 I've used....Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon.

I've had Verizon for about 5 years.

 

Don't even bother with Sprint....their coverage SUCKS in LA.

 

I bought a cell phone for 2 reasons only:

 

1) Emergencies (like I mentioned above)

2) Long distance calls

 

I have an LG phone I've had for 5 years....works great.

Make sure the phone you get works *indoors*....some are better than others.

[Still Learning]

I'm an RF/Microwave engineer (that's what pays for my musical toys). I have been involved with the cellular/PCS industry since it's inception. I've climbed cell towers, designed base station amplifiers, transmitters, and receivers. I've also had to submit equipment to the U.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission) for approval.

 

I only use cell phones for urgent communications. I know about cellular radiation levels, specific absorption rate (SAR) levels and I have done extensive research on cellular radiation.

 

My advise to you is to limit your use of cellular phones, choose one that has a low SAR level, and keep the antenna (whether external to the handset or embedded in the handset) as far as possible from your body. I encourage you to Google terms like "cellular radiation" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cellular+radiation and "SAR LEVELS" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=SAR+Levels

 

Here is a Motorola document submitted to the FCC regarding a SAR Test Report for Motorola Cellular/PCS GSM Transceiver Module stating

 

In the installation guide supplied with the product, Motorola has made the following statement:

[UstadKhanAli]

Wow! Thank you for the information on cellphone radiation.

 

Speaking of headaches, I'm just about getting one from going through all these prepaid cellphone plans!! Sheeesh! I'm not sure if I'm gonna get one or not, but I at least want to examine some options. A lot of them have these little "catches" or keep wanting you to purchase additional minutes or your cellphone will not work anymore and things like that, and I don't really want to get caught up in that.

 

And yes, a cellphone can be a giant hassle, part of the reason I have never gotten one.

[Ed A.]

 

My girlfriend and a couple of my friends keep bugging me to join the 21st Century and get a cellphone. I've never had one before (I'm seemingly the only person in the U.S. who has never had a cellphone). They mentioned that Verizon has some prepaid cellphones that I should consider.

 

 

I finally got a prepaid cellphone this year and I've never had a cellphone previously. I used the Tracfone 365 day prepaid plan with 400 minutes for $99.99 per year. It's almost halfway into the year and I don't think I've used 100 minutes yet. There's just something that bugs me about cellphones and even though I have this limited prepaid service, I still hardly ever use it. I guess I'm just too old school.

I'd say if you've gone this long without needing a cellphone, why bother getting one? They just seem to be a device that intrudes on your privacy. I usually prefer not to be accessible most of the time.

[D Charles]

I've never had a cell phone and really don't want one. I think it should be illegal to use one while driving. They make people just rude.

 

But I'd much rather sit next to a smoker than someone with undiciplined children or someone yakking on a cell phone.