Electronika upgrade time

[dreamshark]

All my consumer electronics seem to be disintegrating (except for the computer, which is fine as long as I stick to old games like Morrowind). I just got a surprisingly large bonus from QLogic. Putting 2 and 2 together, it's time to spend some money!

I started with a new cell phone. My old phone is okay, but having a harder and harder time holding onto a charge. I suppose I could just buy a new battery, but I've been planning to change phone plans for a while anyway. I like having a cell phone, but I really don't use it that much. It's silly to pay $40/month for what amounts to maybe 15 minutes of airtime. So I'm switching to a prepaid plan: T-Mobile To Go. thorintatge did the research and sent me the URL. There are no monthly charges, not even an "activation fee." $100 buys you 1000 minutes that are good for a year. You can then add additional minutes in smaller denominations if you need to. I don't think I've used 1000 minutes in the last 4 years. So what it amounts to is, $100/year plus the cost of the phone. Compared to the $480/year I'm paying now, that's a good deal, especially if you choose a cheap phone.

So, naturally, I decided to sabotage the entire concept of economy phone service by buying the most expensive phone on the list: the Motorola Razr V3, the totally hot, trendy, high-status must-have phone... of 2005. Since it's now well into 2006, it now costs only half the $500 quoted in the original reviews, but it still wasn't cheap. My thinking: 1) I really need a color screen and backlit keys. I just can't see the display on my old LCD-screen Motorola, and it's pretty much unusable in the dark. 2) The less bulky the phone the more likely I will actually carry it. My current phone is not exactly large, but the antenna gets in the way of carrying it in a pocket. And it's so thick. I never realized it was thick until they came out with a phone that was a half-inch thick. Now I know. 3) I need a camera phone, yes I do!
4) It has every bell and whistle that the modern, with-it cell phone user could possibly want. It has Bluetooth! It works in Europe! (not on my phone plan, of course. But you never know...) and it's a quad-band phone! (whatever that means. I have no idea, really). It has a smart card! (which is apparently important in the modern world of cell phones, but I'm not sure why). And so on.

So... it's here. I didn't have the energy last night to go through the grueling activation routine, so I just played with the non-phone features. Oy! What have I gotten myself into? Features on top of features on top of features, all described in a manual that thinks a picture is worth a thousand words, so why bother explaining anything when an inscrutable diagram takes up so much less space. Or maybe they just assume that anybody who would buy a phone like this is already so phone-sophisticated that there is no point explaining what these features are for, or exactly how to use them.

It is incredibly neat looking, though. Only slightly lighter-weight than my old phone, but it DOES fit in a pocket much more comfortably, even the tiny little keys pocket on my sweatpants. Well, I'm going to gather up the laundry list of mysterious 15-digit codes that have to be entered to activate the service and get on with it. I still don't know if I will be able to retain my old cell phone number or not. The lady who took my order (or, rather, fixed the mess that my attempt to buy online had left behind) said that I could do that during activation, but nothing in either of the two slightly contradictory sets of activation instructions mentions it. Oh well, I don't care that much. I never liked my old number particularly.

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Fun with new toys! (I've never yet gotten cell phone service; even during periods when I could have afforded it, partly because learning the learning process looks so daunting.)

$100 for a year sounds good. I'd probably never use 1000 minutes, and that would be cheaper than regular phone service!

[ckd]

If your phone isn't "SIM locked" (and if it is, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someplace that'll unlock it) then you can take it to Europe and buy a prepaid card to put into it.

The "quad band" bit is because GSM phones use different frequency ranges in different countries (yeah, despite being a standard...). Your phone will work on 850/900/1800/1900, which covers basically any GSM network on the planet.

So, for example...go to London. Put down GBP10 on a Virgin Mobile "starter pack". That comes with a SIM card, which you put into your phone, and GBP5 of call credit. You can add time to it just about anywhere.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

ohhh... I see. So that's part of the reason for the SIM card. I sort of understood that it changed the personality of the phone somehow, but I wasn't sure why I might want to do that. Cool!!

[ckd]

Yup. Switch chips, and your phone magically becomes a UK prepaid phone with a UK number! Mighty convenient, especially if you're travelling with someone else who can do the same trick...mobile to mobile calls are usually pretty cheap, so "where are you and do you want to meet at x for dinner?" is no problem.