I’m not exactly a heavy phone user, but I’ve always loved gadgets, especially ones that will allow me to touch the Internet from where ever I happen to be. Still the obscene contractually prices have always turned me off. Even with just a regular “dumb phone” (god I hate that term) I’ve avoided contracts as I don’t use even close to enough minutes for even their smallest plans. I’ve been on a few contracts before but always find myself going back to prepaid plans. I’ve gone through several prepaid companies, each with their own pros and cons, but I’ve always gotten some random cheap run of the mill phone. This might be about to change.
Virgin Mobile has had the Samsung Intercept for a little while now. It’s the first Android phone that they’ve offered and I can safely say I wasn’t overly excited by it. It got pretty bad reviews for being laggy and having a very non-responsive touchscreen. Then there is the price. Sure, with prepaid the phone prices are always on the high side as there is no contract that helps to subsidize the phones cost, but for what the Intercept offered the price was bad. Today Virgin Mobile announced the LG Optimus V. Not only does it look like a much nicer phone (early reviews are backing that up), but it’s 100 bucks cheaper which puts it squarely in the range I’m willing to pay.
Sure, this is by no means a top of the line phone. That’s the one drawback with a lot of the prepaid services, they tend to sell at best mid-range phones that tend to be “outdated”. However seeing as how a phone has never been, and likely never will be my primary device of communication, having the latest and greatest isn’t a major priority for me. When I’m out and about it’ll let me quickly check email or look up something on the web which is all I’m really looking for. And of course all this comes in at 25$ a month for unlimited texts, email, web, data. Sure, it only gives me 300 minutes of voice a month, but right now I average about 30 minutes a month. With my current phone the highest voice minutes used in a month was a little over 200 and that was used by Denise who was having issues with her phone and spending all my minutes trying to get someone to fix her problem.
I’ve still got 60 days and gobs of minutes with my current prepaid so I’ve got time to ponder it, and to see what other phones might come out in the prepaid arena. But right now I’m thinking that come my birthday I might finally be joint the smartphone generation.
