Ok, I'm sure almost everyone here is independently wealthy and think nothing of tossing a few hundred bucks on a new phone every few months, and $100/month on a kajillion minutes plan with unlimited data. If so, I'm not talking to you. Take your HD2, and your "backup" iPhone you carry just to impress waitresses and move along to some other thread...
I'm talking to the other folks- the ones still carrying RAZRs and Nokia 6030s, and drooling over the features and capabilities of Windows Mobile devices with email at your fingertips, abilities to play music and video, etc, but deciding that those features just aren't worth tossing $25-30/month extra at, particularly in this economy.
Don't worry, kids, I'm here for you!
What would you say, if I told you that you could have your very own Windows Mobile Touchscreen device, with email and internet access for the amazingly low price of $5 a month?
"Gee, Todd," (you'd say), "I'd think you were full of *bleep*!"
Right you are! Because $5 is too much- I can show you a way to have it for $2.50 a month!
To qualify for this amazing offer, you simply have to lower your standards, and be accepting of yesterday's technology. You also have to live in the USA (sorry!)
There is a prepaid MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) called PagePlus, that resells Verizon service. While, like most prepaid service providers, they'll be happy to sell you a phone, they will also activate any Verizon phone that was not sold as a prepaid phone. (This prevents you from buying a prepaid Verizon phone at WalMart, Target, etc. and activating it on PagePlus.)
PagePlus offers fairly decent voice rates ($0.04-$0.10/minute depending on refill card purchased- as typical, the bigger the card, the lower the per-minute rate), and fairly decent SMS rates ($0.08), at least for prepaid. Nicely, PagePlus' smallest refill cards are $10, and good for 120 days- about 4 months (thus my claim of "$2.50/month.")
Here's the fun part, though. Via a weird Verizon loophole that's been open for as long as any PagePlus user can remember, PagePlus users have been enjoying free QNC data. Before you start dancing in the streets, let me deflate your excitement a little. Back in the olden days, when life was in Black and White, and cellular phones were powered by steam, the earliest digital cellular data methods were launched- essentially "dial up" data using a voice channel. This was called "CSD" on GSM and the now defunct TDMA systems, and "QNC" on CDMA systems, and gave you blazing speeds of 9.6-14.4kbps (yes, I said 9.6- less than a quarter of the speed of a 56k dial up modem!) This is "dog-slow" circa 2001 internet speeds!
For whatever reason, PagePlus phones connecting to Verizon's QNC network, which Verizon called "Quick2Net" (which is still operating, apparently for "backwards compatibility" reasons,) not only are not charged anything per KB for data, but the QNC data call isn't even counted against your minutes.
Sure it's slow, however, even these speeds are sufficient for email and light WAP/mobile web browsing. Since Windows Mobile devices can be set to periodically poll your POP or IMAP email, you can set the phone to check email every x minutes or hours, and have relatively up to date email anytime you check the phone.
Now, here's one of the many catches- while Verizon's QNC service is still operating, Verizon stopped supporting QNC on their phones sometime before the end of the last ice age, so those of you figuring they'll slap a nice new Omnia II on PagePlus are out of luck (you could do it for voice and SMS, of course, and use WiFi for data, but not the free, slow QNC data.) The trick is to find the best, ancient Windows Mobile smartphone that still supports QNC ("Quick2Net") that you won't be embarrassed to be seen with in public.
Fear not, friends- I've found two that I use personally on PagePlus, as a backup for my "real" smartphones on T-Mobile service. [T-Mo is cheap and a great company, but their rural coverage is a bit lacking, so I forward my T-Mo number to my PagePlus number when I know I'll be traveling outside T-Mo coverage areas. Thanks to Funambol service, all of my smartphones sync over the air with a server, so my PagePlus phone has the same Outlook Contacts/Calendar/Tasks data as my "everyday" smartphone, and up to date email, so my transition from the T-Mo phone to the PagePlus phone is virtually seamless.]
Anyway, my suggested cheapie phones for PagePlus are both from Samsung, and can be had on eBay for well under $50. For the touchscreen crowd, there is the Samsung i730- a circa 2003 Windows Mobile phone with a 2.8" QVGA touchscreen that slides up to reveal a QWERTY thumb board. It's as thick as a brick, and about twice as heavy (I'm kidding, of course- it's about the size of an HTC TyTn or XV-6700 but a bit thicker and just a bit heavier), but it's fast (a 526MHz processor), has WiFi and bluetooth, supports full sized SD cards up to 2GB, and actually has a WM5 update available, so you'll only be one or two OS revisions behind the state of the art. Mine set me back $50 on eBay in July 2009. I don't know if it's the faster processor, or that WM5 is just a little less processor-intensive than WM6, but the i730 feels as snappy or snappier than my AT&T Tilt/HTC TyTn II that's 4 years newer!
For the non-touchscreen fans, or those wanting a phone that isn't so heavy it tries to pull down your pants lower than a teenage mallrat's, there's the Samsung i600. It's a pretty standard WinMo 2003 smartphone- no WiFi, no bluetooth, no QWERTY, but it's a fairly small and sleek clamshell flip phone (small and sleek in its day: late 2002 to early 2003, that is!) but it works well for POP/IMAP email, supports Exchange, and is very inexpensive- I paid $35 on eBay for one a year ago- I've seen them for $20 or even less today. I even put the old freeware Core Media Player (TCPMP) on it to play .avi files for the kids! Sure it's old, but think about the economics for a second- you can have ubiquitous access to your email for a lousy $20 for a used phone, and $2.50 a month for service. That's email and "emergency" web browsing for less than, as the song says, "one thin dime" a day!
Now, to repeat the heavy disclaimers:
This relies on a "loophole" in Verizon's billing/accounting system that, while it's worked for a couple of years, could vanish at any time! Reports from users on HowardForums.com (a cellular phone hobbyist's forum) indicate QNC doesn't work in all areas- generally areas where Verizon recently bought out a smaller regional carrier (probably the old carrier never supported QNC, and Verizon obviously sees no need to add legacy support for a system they no longer support on new equipment!)
Having said that, for a lousy $20-50 you can pickup a "new to you" toy on eBay and ride it out as long as it lasts. Besides "smartphone on a budget," it's an ideal rural/travel backup for those of us with carriers with lesser coverage- e.g. T-Mobile, Cricket, MetroPCS, etc. Then you can find a PagePlus dealer to activate the phone for as little as a few dollar on eBay, and those new activations include $2 (20 minutes) in starter airtime, provided the phone you use has never been activated on PagePlus before (those that have been previously activated on PagePlus will be activated, but will not include the starter airtime, presumably to prevent users from getting the free airtime, letting it expire, and trying to activate again pretending to be someone else the next time they need a backup phone!)
In addition, even if QNC disappears or is just too slow for you, PagePlus sells Verizon high speed data at $1.25/MB- not a great price by any means, but for casual use, it's available, and cheaper than many other prepaid carriers' a la carte rates (I'm talking to YOU, AT&T GoPhone!) Make sure you set your smartphone to use "QNC" or "Quick2Net" ONLY or risk burning your airtime on data.
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