Tell me about your smartphone

zsazsa-stl

I've got smartphone fever.  We are planning two week-ish road trip this summer and I would really, really love to have something to look up maps and weather and hotels and restaurants (and I'll admit it - FB).   But I'm hating the thought of adding a $100+ monthly expense.  I have an AT&T phone now, but I'm not under contract.

So how much do you pay/month?  What company?  Are you happy?

AuntFlo

My phone is out of date and needs an upgrade, so I can't recommend my phone, but I will recommend Sprint.   They've got great coverage and the best plans,  IMO.   We shopped around for the best family data plan about 2 years ago and Sprint was the best by far.   We pay about $120/month for the two of us - we both have smarts.   ETA: that should be smart phones.  We does not have smarts.

The downside of Sprint is their CS, but they're no worse than Verizon or At&t.  I'm assuming they all suck.

nicoleg1982

We have Tmobile (it is the suck) and are right now married to each other, at least via our family plan contract.  I have a MyTouch 3G and while I love all of the fucntions, I hate not having a real keyboard.  Also, Tmobile has spotty service in FL, so I am often left w/o a signal.  

When the jig is up, I'll be going to Verizon/ATT or something.

ETA:  We pay $200/month for both of us to have unlimited everything.  Also, FTR, this phone and plan and expense was a GIFT from stbx that now I have to try and negotiate into my tiny budget.  I am tres bitter about having a phone I don't want, a provider that sucks, and a plan I don't want to afford.

MizBiscuit

We have Verizon. Call coverage on the east coast is pretty good (never been west of 95 aside from one accidental trip to Ohio), and CS has been fairly friendly the few times I have needed them. The unlimited data plan is 29.99 per phone and I have no clue what plan we are on or how much it costs, we share it with my parents as our yearly Christmas gift.

We each have the Droid 2 Global and I love it. The navigation is through Google Maps and hasn't gotten me lost yet. It has just about any app you might need in the store, downloads are pretty quick, and has the slide out keyboard. You need a google account and my only complaint is that I get to much junk mail and the phone would go off every 5 minutes with store spam. I learned google's filter system pretty quick and now most of it gets marked as read so the alert isn't triggered.

**O-Face**

I have old school.  I am exempt from this.  But the cost is what holds us back.  How can we top national coverage for under $100/month for the two of us?  You can't.

*Barbie*

we need to upgrade later this year - we'll be getting Droids of some sort on Verizon. We've had our Verizon phones for nearly 6 years now and have not had any issues with service. My experience with customer service has been good - they have been helpful in finding ways for us to reduce cost. We both have LG EnV Touch phones - very good except after almost 2 years the batteries have crapped out. I get a corporate discount with Verizon, so we pay about 150/month for unlimited text/pic/data, and 1400 or so daytime minutes shared/month. ... which reminds me, i need to call and get that reduced - we don't use nearly that many minutes since we moved.

Cant_wait!

We both have iphones on at&t. I adore my iphone. we pay $135 for two unlimited texting and data, and 700 minutes. We used to have 1400 minutes, but when we had 7,000 rollovers saved up we realized we probably didn't need that many minutes! I almost never use the "phone" feature of my phone.

dharmabunny

We have AT&T and Samsung Impression (I'm kind of a phone luddite).  Love the qwerty keyboard.  Granted, it's mobile web phone (dummy web). That alone has severe limitations.  But I flat refuse to pay $30 a month per phone for full web when we both should really just step away from the interwebs.  It's more like $10 or 15 a month for unlimited mobile web on top of regular family plan charge.  We pay about $105 a month for both our phones, same capabilities (that's with a decent corporate discount, which they nickle and dimed to less than what should have been covered)

I detest Sprint.  Their network sucks.  I had them for a while before, more times than I got hit with a roaming charge.  Not because I was in the sticks, I was smack in the middle of a college campus.  It's just competitor's signal was stronger and it punted me to competitor network. Bam, roaming!  I was never able to argue out of a single roaming charge.  We def. wanted a good network.  Looked at Verizon and we didn't like how data plans were handled (all plans had full web ability, one was limited, the other was unlimited.  Tell me how many megabytes of web surfing you do per day?).  So it's AT&T.  Data plan is split into dummy/full web, but it's all more or less unlimited.  I hate their customer reps (I was this close to walking out on the snotty one that set up our phones and new contract).  And they still do rollover minutes, which DH will burn through during the summer.

So as far as phone plans, it's your choice between Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden, Jeffrey Dahmer, or the creepy masturbator on the public bus.

zsazsa-stl

I can get 20-25% off plans through work, but when we have only been paying about $25/month for both of us...it will be a big jump.  If I get one, H is going to want one.

DG1

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/special-topic-wedding-boards_wedding-woes_tell-smartphone?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Special%20Topic%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:47Discussion:2c936d93-f6e8-4223-859e-df2b5a1cc709Post:7be4540e-9d58-4337-ab79-8840453a27d6">Re: Tell me about your smartphone</a>:
[QUOTE]We both have iphones on at&t. I adore my iphone. we pay $135 for two unlimited texting and data, and 700 minutes. We used to have 1400 minutes, but when we had 7,000 rollovers saved up we realized we probably didn't need that many minutes! I almost never use the "phone" feature of my phone.
Posted by Cant_wait![/QUOTE]


Wow. Are you grandfathered in to one of hte old plans?

We both have iphone 4s from ATT, 700 minutes and unlimited texting & the larger (2GB?) data plan. It's $165/month for the two of us. Which is ridiculous, imo, but it helps that it's *instead of* a land line. 

I had a Verizon flip phone before this, and I never really had issues with service. No issues with ATT service , either, though. I think it's only really bad if you're on either coast, in which case you probably want Verizon.  But for your usual haunts, I think ATT would be fine for you.

I do really really like my phone.  Part of the allure is just going with what most other people have because it's easy. If there's an issue, you know about it because it's reported in the national media.  You don't see "Droid version X.xx on this carrier with this specific piece of hardware had a daylight savings time bug!" 

But there's rarely an issue.   I don't think there'd be anything you wanted that you couldn't get on an android of some kind, but when I conducted this poll last summer, I got a lot of "My Droid does everything I need it to" and a lot of "OMGWTFBBQ, I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE my iPhone!"  Which kindof sold me.

I never had a real keyboard, so I don't mourn its loss.  But iPhone autocorrect has bitten me in the butt plenty of times. (It likes to change 'Dex' into 'sex.' Not what you want to pop up when you're talking about your toddler.)

notamrs

I have AT&T and since the people I call the most (my sisters) are also on AT&T, I just have the plan with the lowest number of minutes available (450 minutes), which is about $34/month with my company discount.  Since literally almost all my calls are with my sisters, I have gazillions of rollover minutes that I will probably never use.

I have the 200MB data plan - $15/month and the 200 message text plan - $5/month.  I've had a couple of months where I went over on my data usage, but not often enough for me to jump to the next level data plan, which is $25.

So - all told I think the monthly bill is around $60 with taxes, etc.

Probably should also have mentioned that I have an IPhone and I love it.  I lost my 3GS and am using my sister's old 3G, but will most likely upgrade to a 4 when I'm eligible in August.

Cant_wait!

probably DG, we got our iphones like a month before they switched formats. We were paying $165 for the unlimited text and data and 1400 (maybe 1500) minute plan before we cut down on minutes.