New phone plane

[Marigold2]

I have Sprint now. Just a basic plan, no e-mail or apps, no picture mail.
Just calling and texting. Costs 53.00 a month with tax.
My contact is up in Sept and I can upgrade my phone now in July.
I feel that the $53.00 is a bit much.
I am not a fan of Verzion, had a lot of problems with their bills always being different every month.

Those of you have all the bells and whistles do you use the apps?
Is it worth it? Or do you find after a while you are just calling and texting most of the time?

I don't really think I need all that but I don't want to be out of the tech loop either.

OOPS I meant phone plan, not plane.............

[BitsyNaceyDog]

Talk about out of the tech loop, I don't even have a cell phone.

I think each person's phone needs are very different. My husband needs to stay pretty well connected to his email for work, so that's actually the primary use of his phone. Checking email from my phone (if I had one) wouldn't be nearly as important to me.

There are a lot of apps (many free) and I'm sure you can find some you'd find useful if you decide to upgrade. My husband has a Kindle app (I think it was free, he rarely pays for an app) and he's gotten some free books for it too.

[blue]

OOPS I meant phone plan, not plane.............

Dang it!! I dont know what a phone plane would have been but I wanted to know. Durnit.

[sparks19]

I used tO have a bare bones phone. Very very basic and i almost never used it. Half the time i fOrgot it at home which isnt good because the whole reason i had it was in case i needed to call for help or something while out with my new drivers lisence.

When hubby got his iphone for work he asked if i wanted one. At first i was like uhhh no i barely use the phone i have

But i must say now that i have my iphone i am in love lol. I use it waaaaay more than i ever used my old phone. I take pictures on my phone amd text them tO hubby and MIL almost daily. In fact im using my phone right nowmto type this lol. This phone is almost like a second child lol

I was spending less on my old phone but i was also wasting a lot more. I would buy minutes and not use any of them before they expired

[cassiesmom]

Would a phone plane ring PTers to gather for a meet-up, and then fly me there?

I've got a Nokia 6015i, which is OLD! I have the least expensive monthly plan they offer and I am losing most of the minutes every month. I should look into going back to a pre-paid plan. My next phone needs a QWERTY keyboard and a camera. I'm doing a lot more texting than I was when I first got this phone. I'm hesitant to replace it, though, cos it works fine and it's got a whole lot of contact numbers stashed in it. My niece is on either Sprint or U.S. Cellular and when she got her current phone, they were able to transfer all the numbers and data right from the old one.

One thing I really like is that if I know the person's cell phone number, and they're a Verizon user, I can type a message in my e-mail and send it right to their phone number, and they get it as a text. Example: my niece couldn't reach her mom for something, so she called me. I shot her an e-mail text to let her know what was going on, then quickly called my niece back to answer her question. I think I'm the only nerd in my family who texts in complete sentences with punctuation and grammar. -- i shld prolly lrn 2 textspeak but im old

I have a couple of co-workers with iPhones and they've got some pretty nifty health care apps like MedCalc and MicroMedex on them. How handy is that for patient care. There's even a speech recognition app for "medicalspeak". That's tempting but the iPhone plus the contract plus the data package is pretty pricey. My oldest niece has an iPhone and doesn't keep a land line.

[wombat2u2004]

I pay $20 every 6 months for my phone. I don't make calls.....it's just there if someone wants to call me.

[K9karen]

I have a family plan with Verizon and John and I have Droids. Yeah, I know, I'm a fool. I pay way too much but I cut our monthly minutes recently. Sorry, this old broad does a lot of texting, especially if I can't reach someone by phone and I think it's important. I have oodles of free apps. I love my Sudoku app. I use it everyday or when I'm waiting for an appointment. I've been sucked up. I know. I need to set my priorities. BTW the sweet guy at the Verizon store gave me coupons so our phones where a total of $50. Can't beat that. I lucked out. I need unlimited long distance. I have lots of PT friends and others in almost every city.

[krazyaboutkatz]

I didn't have a cell phone either but I decided that for emergencies that I should have some kind of a cell phone. I ended up ordering a prepaid tracphone from HSN. I've had it for several weeks now and I only made a brief call to my mom to test it out. It came with 1200 minutes after I activated it and they're good until sometime in Aug. of 2012. I bet I won't even use up all of my minutes by then. Each time I need to buy minutes I'll also get triple the minutes for life. Too bad prepaid minutes have an expiration date. When I make any long distance calls on my land line, I use a prepaid card and these minutes never expire and I can always recharge the card again.

[pomtzu]

I didn't have a cell phone either but I decided that for emergencies that I should have some kind of a cell phone. I ended up ordering a prepaid tracphone from HSN. I've had it for several weeks now and I only made a brief call to my mom to test it out. It came with 1200 minutes after I activated it and they're good until sometime in Aug. of 2012. I bet I won't even use up all of my minutes by then. Each time I need to buy minutes I'll also get triple the minutes for life. Too bad prepaid minutes have an expiration date. When I make any long distance calls on my land line, I use a prepaid card and these minutes never expire and I can always recharge the card again.

Your minutes shouldn't expire. I had Tracfone for years before I went on my son's Verizon plan (for only $10 per month ). With TF I had a double minutes for the life of the phone, and if you go on line, you'll see that they have automatic plans, where you don't have to remember to buy more minutes. They bill you per month and automatically add one month to the expire date and add the minutes - then the same the following month - and on and on. What minutes you don't use are carried over. I was on the basic plan - 50 minutes for 30 days for $10. So with the double minutes I got 100. They actually screwed up tho - one month they extended the date but didn't add the minutes. I called them and they over-corrected the problem. After that I was getting double double minutes - 200 of them every month. When I got rid of TF and went on my son's plan, I had over 2300 minutes that I had accumulated. Nope - I don't use my cell much either......

[Hellow]

I use something similar to a Tracfone - Straight Talk, which is actually a more advanced service of Tracfone. It works like a real cell phone plan, but it's prepaid. No contract or anything like that. I love it, $45 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. The biggest drawback is that you're restricted to the phones that they will allow you to use, but they have smartphones like my Nokia E71.