I have all these cellphones, but I don’t know how to use them!
So, turns out I’ve got a lot of cellphones now. But, in fact, I have service for none of them! I just use the Wi-Fi to test my games.
But, I found at GDC earlier this year when I first got the free Droid from Google (with free service for some amount of time) that having a cellphone with 3G in a city is super convenient! I was able to navigate the city and use busses and do all kinds of neat city people stuff. Wow! I even saved myself $50 by taking a bus to the airport instead of taking a taxi! Neat!
Unfortunately, eventually the free service period ended. The trouble is, when I check the Verizon website (which seems to be the carrier for Droid and Palm Pre, etc) they want me to buy a phone for $500 to get cell service. And maybe get a contract, or something. It was all very confusing and sounded pretty expensive.
But I just want to pay for a single month of 3G+voice+text service for one of the phones I already have. Or maybe I’d want to pay for some really basic voice service year-round and upgrade to 3G fancy stuff during the couple of conferences I go to. Or maybe pop on some service for like a weekend once in a while when I go to a city or something. Either way, I’m entirely unsure how to navigate the wide-world of cellphone plans.
Help me!!!
-Phil
P.S. I have a Nexus One, a Droid, a Palm Pre, and soon: a Palm Pixi and a G1. I’m entirely unsure what I can do with all these phones, but I want to be able to make calls and use 3G from time-to-time!
August 8th, 2010 at 3:48 am
I’d suggest a move to Europe if you didn’t already have all those US-centric phones – around here (Austria, but it’s the same in just about any other European country) you have to go out of your way to buy a provider-locked phone, like buying it from some phone provider instead of from some other shop like Amazon), to get yourself into such a rut – and even then you can just get a SIM card for just about any plan the provider offers and just slap it into your phone… 🙁
Can’t wait for the Android version of Galcon, nevertheless… 🙂
np: Björk – Sun In My Mouth (Vespertine)
August 8th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Those plans are called ‘prepaid’ or ‘pay as you go’ in other parts of the world… maybe search for those terms.
A testing service for other peoples apps? Maybe cuzco could do the testing to free up your time.
August 8th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Hmm, yeah, so are there any 3G pre-paid plans in the US that anyone could point me to?
August 8th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
You can find prepaid plans with a few mobile companies that woud meet your stated needs. If your phones are 3G and not tied to a specific carrier, or if they are unlocked to be used with different carriers, then you can pop in a new prepaid SIM card from a mobile carrier with a 3G network, such as At&t or T-Mobile. Both At&t and T-Mobile make it easy to refill your minutes with a credit or debit card by calling from the phone or goinig online. Good luck.
August 9th, 2010 at 1:34 am
TMobile has 3G prepaid (including data). Of course, you need a phone that works on TMobile – the idiocy of the US is that each network is pretty much incompatible with any other carrier’s network. Nice for locking in users, not so nice for the users.
August 9th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
@anthony – I’m not finding these 3G prepaid plans .. I seem some plans for prepaid voice/text though, which is a start ..
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx?WT.mc_n=PrePdPlnsOvrMain&WT.mc_t=OnsiteAd
-Phil
August 12th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I’ve been searching for the same thing.
You might have better luck taking one of the Verizon phones into a Verizon store and asking them to activate it on a month to month plan. A commission based employee is more likely to do that than the customer service phone line.
Another option might be Metro PCS. They used to advertise that they could put any Sprint of Verizon phone on their network. You’d have to pay $60/month for service with data. But it’s month to month.
Finally — you might be able to get a T-mobile pre-paid sim for use in the Nexus One. I assume it’s unlocked since it came from Google.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Jeff
August 14th, 2010 at 9:42 am
I find http://paygsimwithdata.wikia.com/ to be a very promising project for collecting that kind of data. (Affordable data connection providers without long-time contracts all over the world.)