Best Smartphone Value....suggestions?

[rockgremlin]

My oldest boy can't sleep at night for the want of a smartphone. After numerous refusals, he continues to persist. His latest ploy was to steer me in the direction of an advertisement on Verizon's website boasting unlimited talk and text and 1GB of data for only $45 a month under a prepaid plan. See link: http://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/...p/prepaid.html


I'm extremely leery of this. There has to be some catch here. Can any of you tech geeks see the fly in the ointment here, or at least suggest a better value than this one?

Much thanks in advance.

[Iceaxe]

Have you looked at adding your kid to your plan as an add on? That's how I did it with my kids and the cost is only $15 per additional phone. I have both my kids and wife added to my plan for only an additional $45 a month total. Everyone has unlimited talk and text and we share 10 GB a month (we normally use about 5 or 6).

I have no clue if this is the best plan as my work pays for my phone (AT&T), but it's certainly a bargain for adding additional phones.

[Iceaxe]

PS- you will have no peace until your kid gets a smartphone. I went through this same deal with my kids. When I was young getting a car was the ultimate goal, now it's getting a smartphone.

I saw a recent survey where most kids would choose a smartphone over a car, which is just crazy talk to me.

[phatch]

Prepaid really is the way to go. Save quite a bit of money.

Moto G (2014) is probably the bang for the buck king, around $179. 2015 refreshes are probably due within 4 months or so. Buy it unlocked from Amazon or such. This is a GSM phone and will work with ATT/Tmobile and their mvnos. The moto e isn't bad, but is a markedly less capable phone.

PTel is my preferred MVNO for my kids with Moto G. I use their Real PayGo prepaid plan. This is $100 for a years service. 5 cents a minute talk, 2 cents text out of that $100 dollar pool. Turn mobile Data off in the settings as the data rates are terrible and it will eat your $100 fast. The kids are in wi-fi most of the time anyway for data. Get them to use Google Hangouts for texting and that will use wifi data. On trips if they need data, I use my phone's hotspot to supply them. Teach them to use the Airplane mode and then turn on wifi only to ensure they don't eat up their mobile pool.

Additionally, I like to use Google Voice/Hangouts. Google Voice for voicemail transcribes the message to text and then sends that as a text. So 2 cents to get the message vs. a few minutes on voice mail on PTEL. You have to get your provider to turn off their voice mail features to get google voice to work right. Google Voice will issue a phone number to you and forward calls from that number to your mobile number. An advantage of this system with prepaid phones is you can switch sims as you wish. You go out of town on a trip for a month, switch in a SIM with a higher data plan and activate it. update Google voice with the new number for forwarding and all your friends keep calling the same number they always have.

Sprint MVNOs have some of the best cost plans but phone options are more limited. Ting and Republic Wireless. Ting charges just for what you used the month before. Republic is mostly a wifi based system using wifi for calls where possible and limiting mobile use to a degree. My friend is on a $10/month plan with Republic and has been completely satisfied.

[Iceaxe]

FWIW: I asked around the office and was told the prepaid Walmart plans are hard to beat if you just have one phone on the plan. From just a quick look at their site it looks like you can get unlimited everything for $41 a month if you prepay for 3 months. It gets cheaper if you add restrictions. A couple guys in my office use this plan and have no issues.

Whatever you do get your kid unlimited texting, my kids do hundreds of texts each day. They don't call much and when they do they are not long. If your house has wi-fi the kids will not chew up much bandwidth. My kids have been told not to stream movies unless they are hooked to wi-fi. also turn off the auto stream video in Facebook unless hooked to wi-fi. Auto stream was a feature Facebook enabled a couple months ago and it caught a bunch of people unaware and with a high data bill.

Arn't teenages wonderful

[phatch]

PS- you will have no peace until your kid gets a smartphone. I went through this same deal with my kids. When I was young getting a car was the ultimate goal, now it's getting a smartphone.

I saw a recent survey where most kids would choose a smartphone over a car, which is just crazy talk to me.

The phone serves the same social purpose a car used to.

[oldno7]

The phone serves the same social purpose a car used to.

Hard to get laid in the back seat of your phone...

[rockgremlin]

Arn't teenages wonderful

Yes....I love em to death, but they've constantly got their hand out asking for more $$$. Especially since their rich parents give them smartphones, so my boys feel entitled and deserving of the same. In two weeks, my oldest is going on a 2-week school trip to D.C. and NYC, and would like to have a phone that's capable of taking good photos. <sigh>

[Iceaxe]

Hard to get laid in the back seat of your phone...

That was my first thought. A lot of romance occurred in the backseat of my Camaro Z-28.

[Absolute Gravity]

That was my first thought. A lot of romance occurred in the backseat of my Camaro Z-28.

I bet you had a swwweeeeeeeeet mullet.

*I also had a sweet def leppard mullet. It was 1987 and my step dad was a douche. Shut up.
**have never owned a camaro, thank god, but did put an engine in one (1967 RS) to pay rent once. Sorta knew what I was doing.

[Sombeech]

Is it for actual communication or for mainly gaming and camera? My kids play with a couple of deactivated android phones and connect via WiFi

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

[rockgremlin]

Is it for actual communication or for mainly gaming and camera?

Both

[Rob L]

Here in the UK you can get SIM-only deals (are these available in the USA?). So you buy a used smartphone from ebay or similar, and then get a free new SIM card and then pay on a monthly plan.

I did this, got a used iMoan 4 and pay £7.50 (say $10) per month for unlimited texts, 250 minutes talk time and I think 1Mb per month. For a few extra £ I can upgrade to more minutes, or more data, as suits my needs.

This might not suit a teenager who plays video games all day (before they find what's "down below") or one who wants the latest smartphone fashion accessory, but it might suit a teenager who's fingers are faster than those of a clarinetist in an orchestra.

I use https://giffgaff.com/

Hope that helps,
Rob