darkoshi | cellphone plans

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Verizon's Visible prepaid cellphone service ($40/month unlimited) is now available for Samsung Galaxy S9 phones, as well as iPhones. Support for other Android phones is "coming soon".

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BestBuy and Sprint have an offer available until 4/4/2019:
"unlimited data, talk and text, video streams up to 480p, music up to 500 Kbps and gaming streams up to 2 Mbps. Just $25/mo. with Autopay when you buy an unlocked phone or a Sprint phone via one-time payment."

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Mint Mobile has an intro offer available for new customers until 2/28/2019: $20 for the first 3 months of unlimited text/talk/data with up to 8GB LTE data per month.

The taxes & fees are an extra $4.28 in my area, and the price includes the SIM card and free shipping.

I'd been planning to sign up with them anyway, so I went ahead and ordered that.

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On the Best Buy/Sprint deal would you be okay with video, music and gaming being that slow? I personally wouldn't (I don't game at all so that's not a consideration, but I do watch video on the phone and if I listened to music on it (I mostly don't outside of the rare YouTube video, but one never knows) I'd want it to not buffer or skip or stutter).

I'm about to go check out the Verizon deal. My phone was sold by AT&T but ever since that law was passed that phones can't be locked I can get an unlock code if needed (but it might not be, it might Just Work with Verizon's SIM), so. If the deal doesn't include a hotspot I can't do it, though, since Comcast kicks out enough around here that it's needed and to run the script we were working on I'll need a hotspot for now.

(Just recalled that on my Galaxy s4 the hotspot wouldn't work because it was a Verizon phone running on AT&T. When I called AT&T they claimed they couldn't get the APNs to match up in the same ways, or something, so I might have the same problem only in reverse if I jump to Verizon. Just something for me to keep in mind, I guess.)

Edit: Used their compatibility checker; it says "device not compatible". Clicking Next takes me to a new page to shop phones, because of course it does. So that's out.

With Mint my question would be "which network are they actually using" or do they rent from/jump All The Networks like the one I read about last night - which might've been Mint, come to think of it (can't find the article now, but it was in SmartNews).

Edit: Mint's on T-Mobile, according to your post on Verizon and a Google search. Mint's coverage is good for my city but not outlying areas, and I do visit those from time to time, so that's out.

T-Mobile of late has amazing customer service (at least, gathered from much of what I've been reading) so hopefully you'll enjoy that.

Edited (more info, typo) Date: 2019-02-25 07:35 am (UTC)

I listed the BestBuy one mainly because Qiao was considering it.

Right now I don't watch video or music on my phone at all, except on wi-fi, because my current plan gives only 250 MB data, and it's cut off not only slowed down after that. So anything truly unlimited (even if slowed) sounds better than that. 480p on a phone doesn't sound bad to me, because the phone's screen is so small. I remember streaming music on a modem, so 500 kbps doesn't sound bad to me either. But I have no actual experience as to what those numbers translate to nowadays.

You're right that Mint Mobile's drawback is the coverage area isn't as good.
I'm planning to keep my current carrier (which is on Verizon's network) & phone for whenever I go out of town. I bought a new used phone, for $55, for use with Mint Mobile when I'm in & around town. I'll be getting rid of my land-line, so it will still end up saving me money.

See, this is what I love about pre-paid plans - when "I'm planning to keep my current carrier (which is on Verizon's network) & phone for whenever I go out of town" you can let that phone go out of service when it's not needed, then just top it off when it is. Cell phones always have 911 service by law and carriers don't seem to re-assign numbers between bouts of pre-paid active status as frequently as they used to (AT&T doesn't, anyhow; cheaper or different carriers like Verizon, though, still might).

As to Mint's coverage, I was all like, "Yay!" as I checked the coverage map until I glanced slightly southwest of our city and there was this sea-sized patch of almost entirely white with tiny blue dots sprinkled throughout. That's the direction we go to visit the feed store, beaches, people we know out there and whatever else so I was like, "Wait...no, no, no".