Not to sound dramatic, but cell phones and cellular service have been causing me serious annoyance and even, to a degree, anxiety.
So here's the deal: about a year ago, we were riding along just fine on my in-law's Sprint family plan. Like $17/mo/line, just over $30 for our share of the plan. Unlimited call/text, more than enough data. Wife and I each had HTC One M8's (purchased used). Life was good (save for mediocre phone cameras, and mediocre battery life) until we purchased some Moto X Pure's on a super-sale on Amazon. Sprint gave us the run-around getting us the correct SIM cards for the phones, and their customer service was indescribably terrible. We switched to T-Mobile. In-laws had been having some customer service issues with Sprint, too, and it sounded like they might soon follow us to TMO, and share our family plan there. We'd have very similar service, better customer support (TMO customer support really is good), for just a few bucks per month more.
But, the inlaws never switched, so we were paying over $40/mo/line for TMO. TMO was a very pleasant experience overall, but we finally decided that our monthly bill was just not worth it. I also decided, at the same time, that I was not happy with Motorola's software updates (or lack thereof) -- they were like literally a year behind on security updates, not to mention OS upgrades... so, I spent a bunch of time doing research, and finally decided to buy a used Nexus 5x for my wife, and a used Nexus 6P for me, and switch to Project Fi.
This was a great decision, in theory -- always-up-to-date phones, even better phone cameras than the Moto X Pure's, theoretically similar battery life to the Pure's, cheap cellular service (we're around WiFi most of the time), etc., etc. I thought I could stop thinking about phones/phone plans for a year or more... life would be grand.
Except for that it wasn't. Our used phones have poor battery life. My wife's phone never lasts a full day. My 6P has the early shutdown problem, and it seems to be getting worse. We're 3 months into Project Fi, and I use only about 300-400MB per month, but my wife uses... 2-4GB. She streams music in the car. And yes, I set the Google Play Music quality to 'low'. And yes, we download playlists to our phones for "offline" listening, but she also likes to discover new music via the Google Play Music Radio. Streaming almost any media was free (didn't count against your data usage) on TMO, and I must have failed to factor this in to our usage estimates when I was researching Project Fi... Bleh..
Yes, I know I could ask my wife to not stream music, not use the radio feature, etc... but then, why have a smartphone at all? I mean really... Why have a smartphone? Yeah, I guess we could go back to dumphones and MP3-players, but how do you discover music then? (Without pirating it, that is -- I discovered plenty of good music back in my pirating days... :) ). Music discovery is something that we value. I'd also argue that "Use the over-the-air" radio isn't a real solution, either; neither my wife nor I are big fans of what's typically on the radio. Then again, maybe we haven't given it a fair chance.
But anyway, here we are. Fancy smartphones, with crappy batteries. "Frugal" cellphone service, except for that it doesn't let us use our smartphones as true smartphones, at least not frugally.
I'm at a point where I'm seriously considering buying brand-new Google Pixels (don't think I will buy anything but Google phones from now on, unless we happen to decide to switch to iPhones at some point; gotta have those monthly security updates), and switch back to TMO's 2 lines w/ unlimited data for $100/mo plan. TMO will even give us something like $325 per phone in bill credits for bringing the Pixels. Yeah, it's spendy, but we'll have brand-new phones with amazing cameras, reliable battery life, and a warranty. I can also stop thinking about data usage. This sounds super attractive to me, especially because my wife and I are both in school full-time + working full time, and I just do not have the time to continue spending hours researching our cellular usage, comparing cell phone plans, and hunting for used phones. I have homework, and work work. I'd like to just focus on that for the next two years without antagonizing over cellphones/plans...
Is TMO + Pixels worth it? We can "afford" it/them... But I feel like this is probably one of those important life decision points. Do I "suck it up buttercup" and continue on with our dying phones, and Project Fi (or maybe Cricket; approximately the same monthly price, but less "worrying" about data usage...)? Or is this a case where money really can buy happiness (or at least a lack of angst)? Is the happiness worth it? Maybe it's a question of how much value I place on my time (researching optimal phones/plans). IDK. If you have any thoughts, or stories to share about how you prioritize things like this, I'd love to hear them. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. At a minimum, typing this up was a cathartic experience for me. :)