Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdesja5
Also, OP hasn't said where they live, but I am assuming US because of the Kindle Fire. Doesn't the US have plans/pre-paid offerings that don't require contracts or data plans? I always thought that there was more choice and flexibility outside of Canada. Did I assume incorrectly?
It is also possible here to buy an unlocked GSM smartphone (from wherever, not the telco) and just pop a SIM card into it, keeping your current plan without getting data even with our larger telcos (Bell, Rogers, Telus).
Surely such choices exist in the US?
Just curious! I've spent a lot of time looking into that stuff here for myself and my daughters and I'm wondering how it all works in the States...
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More flexible choices in other parts of the globe but not really in the US.
In the US, there's only one major nationwide carrier (T-Mobile) that doesn't force you into a data plan if you get a smartphone on postpaid regardless of whether or not you got your phone subsidized or paid full price for it. Too bad T-Mobile appears to have the worst coverage of the bunch. T-Mo has pretty good coverage in urban areas but if you move away from the cities, then it's usually bye-bye signal.
Basically, T-Mo is pretty great when it comes to plans (both postpaid and prepaid) but they suffer when it comes to coverage. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint all require a data plan with a smartphone on postpaid. With AT&T, you can get a prepaid plan and forgo data. There are also
MVNO's that operate on AT&T and T-Mobile's networks which offer better tariffs. You could pretty much get your pick of phones with AT&T, T-Mobile (once they've rolled out 3G on the 1900 band instead of AWS 1700/2100 to more areas) and MVNO's piggybacking on their networks. With CDMA carriers, you're pretty much stuck with whatever phones the carrier carries (pun not intended).
Quote:
Originally Posted by krm0789
Seconding the Galaxy Player & dumbphone combination. I just paid $159 for the 4.0. The camera is slightly better than my enV3's camera (GP 3.2 MP, phone 3.0 MP). I'm able to take pictures with the Player, use apps to modify them as I wish, send them via Bluetooth to my phone, & then pix message them to people/email/twitter/etc. It's more limited than a smartphone, but saves me $$$ in not having to pay data.
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OP doesn't need to pay for data if he/she doesn't want to. If he/she just wants data for one hour or one day, that's doable on Philippine carriers. Both prepaid and postpaid options in the Philippines are very flexible so there really aren't the same ramifications to using a smartphone as you'd find in the US. You can generally mix and match features to suit your needs. Carriers there actually compete on pricing. If one carrier comes out with a promo you usually find other carriers following suit. Pay per use text messaging rates are actually reasonable (~$0.02/message) but there are plenty of promotions available for even cheaper texting.
@wyndslash
What type of usage are you looking at? I just checked
Greenhills' website and I'm not seeing any good Android phones in your price range (guessing PhP5,000-8,000?). Not sure what other phones are available and what kind of deals you can get. For decent performance, I'd say minimum you want to get is 800MHz ARMv7 (1GHz minimum is better) and 512MB RAM. You'd also want something with at least 480x800 resolution. Ones with lower resolution just aren't nice to look at (unless you've got a positively diminutive screen like the Sony Xperia Mini).
Check out the phones with MSM7225A, MSM7227A, MSM7230, MSM8255 and MSM8255T from the following links. Those are the most likely phones to fit in your price range.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdra...#Snapdragon_S2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdra...#Snapdragon_S3