My 2 year contract with AT&T is up in a few months. I received notification that I could receive a new phone for free (or heavily discounted) if I renew my contract. I checked into it and found a few phone that I liked and *ALMOST* pulled the trigger.
The phone I have now is the Samsung A877 Impression. To be honest it's been a bit quirky.. losing text messages every once in a rare while and what not but overall a decent phone with FANTASTIC battery life. My biggest problem is what I pay for it. I was paying close to $70/month when all was said and done and since it replaced a $40/month land-line it seemed like a good deal at the time. My issue was that its browser only works "meh" and that I found myself almost NEVER using it on the internet. I also use very little voice with it and only 'moderate' amounts of texting. It's a great convenience to have the phone but to pay $70/month for something I rarely use just seemed silly. I was able to adjust my plan as low as possible without breaking the contract by getting rid of the unlimited data and getting a 500 text message plan and got it down to just under $50/month. Still not stellar but acceptable.
Now I'm finding myself wanting to use the internet more and wanting a Droid phone. While AT&T definitely does offer droid phones (several I can get dirt cheap if I renew) they force you to join a data plan to get one which would bring my bill back up to $70 maybe even more! Now I'm cheap but was still about to pull the trigger until my little sister told me about a new phone she got.
She got a full featured droid phone from Best Buy for $150. Now with 2 kids (one of which has many allergies and visits the hospital regularly) and limited income she's really struggling financially so I was asking her about it and why she would spend that kind of money on a phone? I was actually confused because she was one day complaining because she could afford a decent birthday present for her 4-year-old daughter but then the next she goes out and buys a $150 phone, but after talking to her about it it all makes sense.
She was paying $50/month for a pay-as-you-go plan with a cheap, no feature phone. After about 8 months she dropped the phone one too many times and couldn't fix it while she was in town a few weeks ago. Being desperate to replace it she bought this phone (actually I found out later my dad bought it for her) through a Virgin Mobile pre-pay plan which cost her $25/month! And this comes with unlimited data and unlimited texting.. and 300 voice minutes. I also learned that it piggybacks through the Sprint network so it has very good coverage!
As far as tethering goes... well Virgin disables it on the phone but from what I've been reading it's easy enough to enable it.
*NOTE: I just noticed that they just raised their rates from $25 to $35/month BUT decreased their unlimited plan from $60 to $55/month. It's still a heck of a deal though and it would still only take a few month to pay off the cost of the phone. Also keep in mind that cheaper phones do exist (as well as more expensive ones as well) even a couple of blackberry phones if you're into that. I also found the LG Optimus V phone through Amazon.com for as
little as $126 so you can save a little there too.
