Author Topic: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months  (Read 2762 times)

EchoStache

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 773
Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« on: December 04, 2021, 07:37:31 AM »
One of our 5 cell phones is currently on Straight Talk for about $50/month.  I'm going to switch it today to Mint Mobile.  They are running a promotion on their $15/month plan…buy 3 months, get 3 free.  So six months for $45 plus taxes etc.

-Savings will be $250 i.e. $50 rather than $300 for the 6 months!  After this ends, my son will start paying this bill himself.

AMandM

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1673
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2021, 06:21:04 PM »
Wow, impressive!

SimpleCycle

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1259
  • Location: Chicago
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2021, 06:45:30 PM »
I have Mint Mobile and LOVE it.  It doesn't have quite the coverage of Verizon in rural areas, but that has not mattered much to me.

JupiterGreen

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 584
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2022, 06:47:52 AM »
I want to hear more about Mint's coverage, I have straight talk right now. Do you have a smart phone? When you say rural what do you mean? We drive through a few states every year and I'm wondering if you can confirm where the dead spots are. Does it impact nav on a smart phone?

SailingOnASmallSailboat

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 695
  • Location: Somewhere where the water is at least 5 feet deep.
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2022, 07:42:03 AM »
I want to hear more about Mint's coverage, I have straight talk right now. Do you have a smart phone? When you say rural what do you mean? We drive through a few states every year and I'm wondering if you can confirm where the dead spots are. Does it impact nav on a smart phone?

I think this varies WILDLY depending on where you are. Mint's underlying network is T-Mobile. I have a good friend in the Florida Keys who swears by T-Mobile; in Virginia and along the US East coast I mainly swear AT it. I've got Mint Mobile, BTW. DH had Google Fi for a while (also T-Mobile based) and swapped to Visible (Verizon-based) because having both of us on the same crappy network was not working.

I've found that cell coverage maps for all carriers to be wildly optimistic. YMMV.

SimpleCycle

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1259
  • Location: Chicago
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2022, 06:20:41 AM »
I want to hear more about Mint's coverage, I have straight talk right now. Do you have a smart phone? When you say rural what do you mean? We drive through a few states every year and I'm wondering if you can confirm where the dead spots are. Does it impact nav on a smart phone?

I do have a smart phone.  It's the T-Mobile network, and there is broad coverage in most highway areas of the U.S.  So if you are sticking to interstates, no problem.

Where I have had problems is on minor roads in places that are pretty sparsely populated.  So for example, driving between Rockford and Galena, Illinois, my coverage dropped out a few times.  And when we went to the very tip of Door County, Wisconsin, we didn't have any meaningful data coverage north of Ellison Bay.  I mostly still had cellular phone coverage but even that dropped out when we got to the tip of the peninsula.

It does affect Google Maps if you need to load directions when you are offline, but it does not affect navigation that has already been loaded.  There is also an easy way around it, which is to load offline maps for the area you are going to.  And my $15 backup system is a U.S. atlas in the trunk.  Once back when we still had Verizon, we were in rural Ohio and our directions completely dropped out due to cellular coverage and we had no backup - lesson learned!

To me it is well worth saving upwards of $50/month for the occasional inconvenience of losing cellular coverage.  I'm old enough to have traveled widely before cell phones were common, so it clearly can be done.

cool7hand

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1319
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2022, 09:30:38 AM »
Kudos. Thanks for sharing!

JupiterGreen

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 584
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2022, 12:37:59 PM »
I want to hear more about Mint's coverage, I have straight talk right now. Do you have a smart phone? When you say rural what do you mean? We drive through a few states every year and I'm wondering if you can confirm where the dead spots are. Does it impact nav on a smart phone?

I do have a smart phone.  It's the T-Mobile network, and there is broad coverage in most highway areas of the U.S.  So if you are sticking to interstates, no problem.

Where I have had problems is on minor roads in places that are pretty sparsely populated.  So for example, driving between Rockford and Galena, Illinois, my coverage dropped out a few times.  And when we went to the very tip of Door County, Wisconsin, we didn't have any meaningful data coverage north of Ellison Bay.  I mostly still had cellular phone coverage but even that dropped out when we got to the tip of the peninsula.

It does affect Google Maps if you need to load directions when you are offline, but it does not affect navigation that has already been loaded.  There is also an easy way around it, which is to load offline maps for the area you are going to.  And my $15 backup system is a U.S. atlas in the trunk.  Once back when we still had Verizon, we were in rural Ohio and our directions completely dropped out due to cellular coverage and we had no backup - lesson learned!

To me it is well worth saving upwards of $50/month for the occasional inconvenience of losing cellular coverage.  I'm old enough to have traveled widely before cell phones were common, so it clearly can be done.

Thanks, I'll look into this. I know what you're saying about navigation, that's pretty badass. I'll look at the coverage map for T-mobile too. Straight talk has never been phenomenal but it used to be a good deal, now it's just another expensive bill. This is definitely an area in our budgets where I could cut so I really appreciate all this information.

Abe

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2647
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2022, 05:42:47 PM »
Any recommendations for an AT&T customer looking to “downgrade”? I basically use only the phone, text and email outside of a Wi-Fi area. Speed for the email is not important (just text usually).

SailingOnASmallSailboat

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 695
  • Location: Somewhere where the water is at least 5 feet deep.
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2022, 07:29:49 AM »
I want to hear more about Mint's coverage, I have straight talk right now. Do you have a smart phone? When you say rural what do you mean? We drive through a few states every year and I'm wondering if you can confirm where the dead spots are. Does it impact nav on a smart phone?

I do have a smart phone.  It's the T-Mobile network, and there is broad coverage in most highway areas of the U.S.  So if you are sticking to interstates, no problem.

Where I have had problems is on minor roads in places that are pretty sparsely populated.  So for example, driving between Rockford and Galena, Illinois, my coverage dropped out a few times.  And when we went to the very tip of Door County, Wisconsin, we didn't have any meaningful data coverage north of Ellison Bay.  I mostly still had cellular phone coverage but even that dropped out when we got to the tip of the peninsula.

It does affect Google Maps if you need to load directions when you are offline, but it does not affect navigation that has already been loaded.  There is also an easy way around it, which is to load offline maps for the area you are going to.  And my $15 backup system is a U.S. atlas in the trunk.  Once back when we still had Verizon, we were in rural Ohio and our directions completely dropped out due to cellular coverage and we had no backup - lesson learned!

To me it is well worth saving upwards of $50/month for the occasional inconvenience of losing cellular coverage.  I'm old enough to have traveled widely before cell phones were common, so it clearly can be done.

FYI I have not found this to be the case in the Northeast and large sections of Virginia along 64 and 81. There are wide sections of 95 in New Jersey and Connecticut, for example, where T-Mobile (or at least the Mint version) is almost non-existent. That may be because Mint is the second-tier level and the network as a whole is oversubscribed because there are just too many people up there?

I totally agree that it's worth saving upwards of stupid $$ a month for the occasional inconvenience of losing cell coverage. And +1 on the backup GPS being the atlas in the car!

driftwood

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 397
  • Age: 43
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2022, 09:49:17 AM »
Thanks for the bump to shop for a better price... I've been using googlefi and paying $45-$70/mo, except for my peak data months the $15/mo plan on Mint will cover the data I use. Facepalm for being lazy and not looking into this sooner.

geekette

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2550
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2022, 04:03:22 PM »
Any recommendations for an AT&T customer looking to “downgrade”? I basically use only the phone, text and email outside of a Wi-Fi area. Speed for the email is not important (just text usually).
Check out Redpocket or Airvoice.  I have the Redpocket 360 day plan (currently on eBay for $99).  1000 talk, unlimited text and 1G of data every 30 days.  You pick which network you want to be on.  I currently use Verizon, but have used AT&T.  T-Mo is less than ideal for my needs.

You can also go month to month with Redpocket.

If you don't use much talk/text at all, Airvoice has a $10 plan, but it's quite limited, and only AT&T.

Cassie

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7946
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2022, 01:36:21 AM »
I have T-Mobile’s prepaid plan for 15/month. I get unlimited talk/text with some data.,
« Last Edit: February 06, 2022, 04:38:02 PM by Cassie »

jnw

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2019
Re: Lowered cell phone from $50/month to $50/6 months
« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2022, 07:28:53 AM »
Tello is still working well for me with GSM now instead of CDMA.  The iPhone's I buy (last one: 2020 iPhone SE for $200 off ebay), they are factory unlocked which support both CDMA and GSM.  I guess CDMA is totally dying these days.. Sprint (who used CDMA) was bought out.

I pay Tello $10 per month for 1GB data and unlimited texts and phone calls.   With tax and fees etc. it costs $12 per month.  I calculated the phone hardware cost to be about $5 per month (after buying and selling the phone and upgrading every 2 years or so -- can't wait for hte next cheap iPhone SE.)