In the end i went with a higher end phone with better voice hardware, a $2.99 Skype monthly plan plus tmobile and a ~$6 permanent skype number for a ~$40/mo cadillac plan. The unlimited minutes were important to me so I can ditch my employer's phone and get a stipend of around $24 per month to use my own.
Sorry TurboLT, I'm going to use you as a case study on how
not to do cell phone service.
See, I find this sort of thinking absolutely
crackers. You drag VoIP into the mix and use data for "unlimited" minutes per month to call, you suffer the faults and shortcomings of using VoIP on a wireless network, you expose yourself to even higher radiation levels, you shell out even more money to a proprietary VoIP provider like Skype to try and make it tolerable, and you spend even more money to do so just so you can what, exactly? Binge on ridiculous amounts of streaming media so you're not bored outside of the house?
There are "unlimited" talk and text plans available on the GSM end (without data) for as little as $25 a month (
Spot Mobile) that suffer none of the caveats of using VoIP over wireless, there's $30 plans that come with chunks of data ranging between 100 and 250MB of 3G data which is
plenty with some light data discipline (
Airvoice,
Spot), there's $35 plans that provide "unlimited" 2G data (
GoSmart), there's equally priced at $40 plans that provide 1GB of data (which is a tad more than
the national average of smartphone data use) or plans that offer "unlimited" 2G data with the first 250MB at 3G speeds (
P'tel), and for an extra $5 a month, you could get everything you claim your "cadillac plan" has
including the 5GB of high speed data without multiple phone numbers, third party ROMs for a stock Google device, third party bolt-on VoIP apps, paying money to multiple parties, potentially violating your Terms & Conditions agreement (
check section 18(i) in your case - it's not
expressly forbidden like they used to or some other carriers currently do, but incoming VoIP technically requires some level of keep-alive to ensure calls ring through, amongst other things), and relying on dodgy VoIP over wireless to make your "unlimited" calling while out and about (
GoSmart).
This is
exactly the sort of thinking that happens when you let your wireless shopping be lead around by your data habit and what I warn against over believing that you need unlimited
anything, huge gobs of data, or high-speed (HSPA+ or LTE) data. It isn't a smart and frugal setup or a "cadillac plan", it's not even a setup that effectively "cheats" the system with significant savings without "sacrifice" by using alternate data technologies, it's simply poor planning and a terrible setup for the money spent,
with or without the possible T&C violation... and the thing that gets me the most is,
I've already been over why this is a bad setup for the money and I already specifically showed you these plans last month.
More is not always
better, especially when you're also attempting to squeeze every last penny spent while greedily taking as much as possible instead of simply being practical and paying for what you actually need. Frequently, you'll find the simplest and easiest solution is barely more expensive than that hacky kludge you're trying to use to do the same thing, and sometimes can be even
cheaper if you just pay attention and do your homework. There is such a thing as being too cheap, and that mindset frequently manifests as being penny wise and pound foolish. Ridiculous things have been done to ultimately save $5 a month on an "unlimited" talk and text with 5GB data cellphone plan that's only supposed to cost $30 but actually costs $40 to make it tolerable to use... and ironically enough, your
actual needs could probably be met better with a different $30 plan from another provider by exercising a modicum of self discipline and pre-planning with your data usage to make it happen.
My plan was to use VOIP to have 5GB of LTE and unlimited calling minutes. Unfortunately the N4 has very crappy call hardware for VOIP. I had very bad echos on GrooveIP, Viber, Spare Phone, etc. Skype and Line2 worked reasonably well. Both cost the same for LTE calling.
Despite what others say, VOIP calling is fine in an LTE area with low ping. I'm in the Bay Area and see pings of 30-50ms with t-mobilSkype had the best call quality by far but the worst interface. Line2 has great features and interface but their voice codec doesn't sound as good.
My old Samsung Intercept could do proper SIP calls on WiFi just fine, and it was a
tenth of the phone that the Nexus 4 is. There's also very little wiggle room on criticizing a stock Google device on its supposed hardware performance involving data tasks when you replace that stock firmware
with a hacked ROM designed to enable LTE on a device that
only supports LTE Band 4 (1700/2100) AWS on a fluke (despite it's "twin"
LG Optimus G E975 having relatively full LTE support) and wasn't properly designed or certified on the hardware level for LTE support in the first place. Don't blame the hardware, blame the
data network and the
user, especially when the chief complaint is
echo on VoIP service over a wireless cellular network on a prepaid plan with postpaid data prioritization (check the fine print). I find it telling that the most successful VoIP apps for making calls on the T-Mobile wireless network are
VoIP apps that use some of the highest compression, highest latency tolerance, and lowest bandwidth codecs usable for voice service. It's also a living testament as to why I keep saying VoIP over wireless is a bad idea in the first place for core voice services. Data gets prioritized
straight to the bottom on the network hierarchy for latency and throughput, doubly so for prepaid and MVNO customers.
