My experience with cell phones

When I was a kid, I remember an older man who went to my parent's church had some type of cell phone in his car. I don't remember what technology it utilized, but I remember him saying calls on it were something like $2 per minute and it was only for emergencies, so it was amazing to me. This was long before cell phones came out.

Then, probably around the age of 16 in the year 2000, Cricket wireless locally in Pittsburgh began offering cell phone plans beginning at $19.99 a month for unlimited talk and text. It was revolutionary, and so I got one. This was truly my first cell phone and at the time I got it no one in my family was using them yet, except for my brother who worked for MCI.

Since that time, cell phones have gotten more and more expensive and we've moved away from voice data which takes up a large amount of bandwidth and are moving over to text and binary data which takes up very little bandwidth. You'd think the technology would have gotten less expensive, but in most instances it has not.

Fast forward to today and my girlfriend is constantly bothering me to maintain a cell phone. I usually have used cheapo burner-like phones, prepaid from companies like virgin mobile so that I can control when I pay my bill and what level of service I utilize. With the introduction of android phones to the market place, the smart phone technology has gotten cheaper, but the service maintains a level of expense that seems needless to me.

A few weeks ago, T-mobile came out with a program where all five of my closest family members could get on the same plan for $20 a month per line for unlimited data (3G), talk and text. Not bad. So, I cave to my girlfriend's request and get a cell phone finally. The phone was $50 down and $2 a month for two years, but the service itself was not contracted, so that is nice.

Now, I get the thing home, it's an LG90 phone and when I'm home, it uses my wifi for everything, including voice calls, meaning that my operation of this phone from where I spend a solid 95% of my time is not costing T-mobile a penny. Why am I paying for their service at all? Am I not already paying my ISP for my wifi? Am I not already buying this phone? I really don't see why I need Tmobile at all at this point.

Couldn't some internet company set up an android app that would let android users make VOIP calls to other phones so that way people like me could just buy any old phone and just use it from wherever I am that has wifi access?

The only thing I like about this phone is that I can use it as a GPS when I'm about and I can use it as a wifi hotspot so that I no longer have to factor that into my decision about where I go out for lunch when I'm away from home. Other than that, this service is kind of useless. We as a people have enough routers in this country that we could almost make our own wireless network and just put phone companies out of business in one fell swoop.

You're paying for the ability to use it everywhere. Which is really novel and cool for about a day, until you start to get Facebook and email updates every ten seconds when you're trying to interact with the real world. I recently chose not to re-up my prepaid cell phone and am testing to see just how badly I actually need one.

My reasoning is that I had a several months long war with Straight Talk - by far and away the worst company I have ever dealt with on any and all levels. They finally capitulated and gave me some free service to make up for the 15 interactions in which they did nothing. But they never did address my main problem - which was overthrottling. So now I am assessing just how important portability is to me.

Then again I am playing an Android game on it even as I am typing this...

a reply to: Hefficide

Hey, I looked at android games, are any of them any good? I bet minecraft is hard as heck to play on this small screen, although it has terraria, which is kind of cool. I even saw Bard's Tale. I haven't thought about that game in forever. I'll probably cave in and get the Final Fantasies at some point, but then again, this thing should probably be able to run an NES emulator, so I might not need to buy them.

Yeah, I can see the convenience of mobility, that is good. I'd prefer that cost me something like $5.99 a month, but then again I think I'm literally as cheap as they come. The local Catholic thrift shop has books starting at $0.10 and often I won't buy one at that price unless I'm absolutely certain I'll read it.

a reply to: Nechash

The one I am addicted to is called "Star Wars Force Collection". It's a card based game - kind of like Pokemon or that sort of thing - but with a mountain of extra stuff loaded in. I started playing it out of boredom about six months ago and now it's a daily habit. It's highly addictive.

Like all games these days there are options to buy extra stuff - but even without spending a penny I can keep up with the Joneses so to speak.

If you like Star Wars, I'd highly recommend it.

a reply to: Nechash

I only and have always used pay-as-you-go or prepay plans with unlocked phones.

The carriers will lie to you and will screw you over.

An unlocked phone may cost a little (or a lot) more, but you maintain control. If you purchase your phone from the provider, they will use it to screw you.

a reply to: Hefficide

Will check it out. I played Star Wars TCG back in the day along with Star Wars RPG from WEG. Not so much into Star Wars since Lucas made the last three films, but at one time I really enjoyed it. ;p Have you tried mini death star? I saw that featured on youtube.

a reply to: incoserv

The only downside to unlocked phones these days is that the Telecoms caught onto that gig and many will say they don't support ones device - even though it's BS because a sim card is a sim card is a sim card.

Ran into that with T-mobile. The funny part is that T-mobile says they don't support my phone yet the sim card in my phone, via Straight Talk IS a T-mobile sim card. LOL

a reply to: Nechash

my only cell experience is when my wife left it here and the damn thing kept going off. ( wifes face book was atteched )

it kept going off , so i picked it up and gave it a heave across the room. it didn't survive. she got another and didn't put face book on it.


needless to say i hate cell phones.

I paid 10 bucks for my phone. It costs 20 bucks for 120 minutes. If anyone calls me and begins to get chatty, I tell them to get to point and wrap it up.

a reply to: Nechash

I remember about 8 years ago when house phones cost about $40 buck a month, and a cellphone was alot cheaper. Not anymore...

All a cellphone is, is a huge leash. Really if it weren't for my business I wouldn't have one. How I lament the old days when I could leave the house and not be bothered by a soul.

a reply to: KeliOnyx

You are forgetting one thing about that world. Men refuse to ask for directions. We refuse to stop and ask a gas station attendant where anything is... But yet we'll let our phones tell us exactly where to go without even thinking about disobeying.

There is an entire thread in that idea somewhere.... Hrm.

Back in 2011 T-mobile allowed cellphones to make wifi calls. They allowed all phones to do so but users quickly found a loophole. Just as you are now discovering is what most people did with much more expensive phones. They bought a $550-$700 phone with only $50-$100 as a down payment. But they never paid their bills. Once they discovered that the wifi calling feature allowed the phones to still receive calls, even after T-mobile would incapacitate the sim card due to defaulted terms, they quickly latched on a firmware update to all of the phones, including a new terms of service that you have to accept, that requires your phone to have an active account in order to use the wifi calling feature.

I am not sure if any hackers out there have figured out a means to bypass this firmware for phone numbers.... but it will be interesting to see what they build when the time comes.

If you only ever use it in your house then jail break the phone, take out the sim card. Flash the bios. And never venture out of the house with your phone. Just keep it at home.

But the moment it reaches an at&t wifi source? It will lock the phone.

I have a cheap phone and buy a card when needed. If I pay twenty bucks for 60 minutes, they double my minutes so I get 120 minutes. No matter what I get, the minutes are doubled. It usually last me months.

a reply to: Nechash

Here is my experience with cell phones.

I started out with my first one when I was in my mid teens. It was a Nokia 3210, and it had two really great features that I was aware of. Besides the fact you could make a phone call with it, and send a text message, it was also dense, and compact, which meant you could use it as a paperweight, and as a bludgeon. It had a black on greed LCD display, a game called Snake, and some other utterly irrelevant tosh on it. It was easily the most hardcore bit of communications gear I have ever owned. It got dropped, it got kicked, it got used as a defensive weapon, and it never had a problem once that I could not fix by taking the cover off and reseating the keypad. It served me bloody well, and I used it until it gave up on me completely. The battery connection died, that is to say that even a new battery would not have been any use. It was just buggered.

I had that phone until I was about eighteen years of age, at which point I got a Nokia 7210, which was lighter, and smaller, and had a colour screen as well! However, it was also relatively weak, and could not deal with certain elements of my lifestyle. That is why the screen cracked, which lead to several failures which seemed to cascade away from that initial breakage. I did not like it at all.

Next, was some other Nokia phone, but it felt like it was made of that thin plastic that only the cheapest toy in the store is made from, you know the stuff? I did not have that one long enough to worry about it breaking however, since it fell out of my pocket while I was at work one day, and that was the last I saw of it!

Since then, I have always used the oldest style of phone I could lay my hands on. I have no idea what the model number of the one I am using now is, but it takes a BL-5CB battery (3.7v) and is dirt simple. As far as I know I cannot even listen to the radio on it, let alone hit the web, and if I can I never have. I have no interest in doing so.

However, because of the nature of my work, I may soon be forced to acquire one of the thousand times cursed smartphones that people have been ranting about for a while now, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt, that I am not looking forward to that at all, not in the least. I know how bloody fragile they are, have friends whose phones have encountered little more than a stiff breeze, and managed to conspire to fail their owners as a result! They are uniformly pathetic, weak, and utterly incapable of standing up to what I would consider a real life. I would imagine they are perfect for an office professional, but when it comes to carrying them around while about some real honest days labour, I suspect that the rigours of such will render any smartphone I could get my hands on, into nothing but broken glass and failed software inside of 72 hours.

You dont need wifi calling.

If you have a google account you can use google voice which will give you a phone number, also google hangouts will do this plus video calls. And there are other apps in the app store that will do this and all you need is a wifi connection or hotspot connection. My sons iPod (not even a phone and has NO sim card) has google voice and he can call and text as long as hes on a wifi or hotspot connection. He can use the wifi at Mcdonalds to make a call.

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