Kickin It Old School With A Prepaid Phone

Here in Europe, unlocked pre-paid phones are the standard. When you go on vacation, the first thing you do is drop into a mobile phone shop and pick up a new SIM for whatever country you happen to be in this week.<p>When I moved back to England from Spain, I walked into a store, paid 5 pounds, and received a SIM with 5 pounds credit on it. The whole operation took upwards of a minute and a half.<p>It's just so simple, straightforward, and cheap this way. It's amazing that people in the US tolerate it any other way. Especially since you can walk into any T-Mobile or ATT store today and get a prepaid SIM for any unlocked handset.

It's weird to see how less prevalent prepaid phones are in the US. Here in Europe, they're everywhere, hell I bought my iPhone on <i>prepay</i>. I wonder what lead to this difference.

I have been using a pre-paid phone for the past 10 months. It averages out to ~$20/month for me--very low for the USA! I am on the computer about 12 hours/day for work, research, and of course Hacker News; so I don't need apps. And I don't really need a phone that often. I just use it to schedule appts, catch up with family, friends, etc.<p>Pre-paid phones: two-thumbs up ^^

This article is right on. I've been tempted by many smartphones over the years, but I currently pay about $10/month average for my prepaid cellphone, and it works great. Smartphones are cool and all, but I really don't feel like I'm missing enough to outweigh the thousands of dollars I've saved over the last few years.

I too use pre-paid only. I pay less than $7/month w/Virgin mobile. I do look longingly at smartphones. But it's just not worth it for me with current structure of plans. They're either voice-centric, which i'd never use, or data-centric in ways i don't need. i'm near a computer w/internet access most of the time. I love the Internet, and do all the dorky social networking things that make me somebody who should be slurping access from everywhere. I'll gladly drop bank for something that fits me, but i'm basically waiting out the entire old school phone system :D In the meantime, i have a bad phone. I bet there will be Android phones soon on the big pre-paid systems.

New York Times: Prepaid Is the New Wireless Battleground <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/prepaid-is-the-new-battleground-for-wireless-carriers/" rel="nofollow">http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/prepaid-is-the-new-...</a><p>MetroPCS in my area is always filled with people, almost like an Apple Store! Unfortunately, they don't yet have anything that approaches a true smartphone. Palm could dump their stock of Pre and Pixi there and really clean up. For the few phones that offer data, the voice/data bundle is just $60 prepaid/month. Hell, I'd go for that, Let me pay for my own damn phone and not be tied to a carrier for two years!

I will gladly pay for a phone outright if the carriers offer a data-centric plan for $50 a month with no commitment.<p>Until then, I'm hiding out this year with Google Voice and my Virgin Mobile prepaid. So far, it's been awesome and works out exactly for my needs. It sucks that I don't have decent mobile data: but I can wait a little longer until carriers realize they need to offer better and customized services.<p>I've saved about $400 this year so far by switching to my new setup. With the saved money, I have some new shiny clothes and have been enjoying eating out more!

Have been hunting around for prepaid plans, as Verizon is currently screwing me for all I'm worth (2 people ≈ $90/mo for 700 minutes, texts 20c each way). Problem is, I <i>need</i> roaming, so Virgin is out, and we hit roughly 300 minutes per month.<p>About the best one I've been able to find thus far has been Net10... anyone use it? Anyone care to chime in? The website is a bit frightening, but I'd be willing to survive that.

T-Mobile prepaid works well in the US. Just get a used T-Mobile Samsung flip phone and then get a prepaid SIM card. You can order the SIM card from T-mobile.com or walk into your local store. Initially, you should put $100 on your phone to enter the 'Gold' plan. Then your minutes and phone number will last for 1 year from the last time you added minutes. Talk time is about $0.10/minute.

I have an old iPhone I was given, and I'm using that on prepaid. Costs me about AU$30 month and for that I get 300MB data + a few hundred text/mms + few hundred minutes + free tethering (we've had iPhone tethering for about a year now)

It's striking how mature mobile phone technology is. You can buy a phone that works really well as a phone for quite reasonable sums of money. I have bought prepaid mobile packages just for the phone.

I use a prepaid phone for an inbound-only number for my business. Just gotta remember to add some credit if I'm still using it in a year's time, so the number doesn't get repossessed.

Dug this Boy Genius Report article up from May 6th:<p>"The amount of voice minutes used by young adults continues to plummet as email, IM and SMS grows at a rate of 150% during the years 2007 to 2009. Factor in 1800% growth in mobile data in this segment and it’s pretty obvious Virgin is one of the few companies that actually caters to the demands of its customers."<p><a href="http://bit.ly/9kWCcm" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/9kWCcm</a>

My experience with prepaid phones is that they're cheaply made (as you'd expect for a phone you can buy for $10). I used prepaid between 2001 and 2008 (and am still on a month-to-month plan), but most of the phones were crap. Volume doesn't go up far enough, or the screen has dead pixels, or the keypad stops working unless you push really hard on the numbers, or it can only hold 20 contact numbers, or the battery lasts only half the day after a few months of use (when it started, I could charge it only once a week, but...).<p>On the plus side, if I had these problems with my current smartphone, I'd get it fixed, whereas with those, I just threw them away and got a new phone.