I was surfing around tonight digesting slashdot and came across an interesting use of a pay as you go phone to do gps. I thought to myself, my that is interesting and it gets the web for $.35 per day, has GPS and is java programmable. Then it dawned on me that I might like that phone, no camera and available for $40 with no contract.
Well my contract for phone runs out in June and I do think I am paying too much for my service as it is, I did some math and struggled with Sprint’s new customer system which made me create a stupid new id which I will forget and had ridiculous password restrictions too. Anyhow I couldn’t get their system to tell me how many minutes I was using a month (hmm I wonder why?). You would think that would be a no brainer, like something all customers would be interested in to see if we have the right plan. Aha!
I was able to download my last 4 months of data and I found out that I never NEVER used more than 500 minutes of service, even including my free nights and weekends. Okay, so how much does boost cost, and could I live with it?
$.20 per minute primetime (okay at my old rate [before tax and upcharges] it was $40) which would leave me with 200 primetime minutes to equal out to the same rate. Lets see I pay insurance which is $3, and get hit with various charges for maybe $10.
Okay boost is not utopia, I see that you have to charge every 90 days, rather that payments expire after 90 days. So there is some calculation blah blah blah, beyond that I am not seeing any drawbacks.
Reading reviews of the phone now, wondering if there is a tri-band model that would work in europe…
Questions for Boost: can I turn off the walkie talkie feature (I understand they recycle numbers and charge $1 per day for use); can I change the number of the phone (try it out till my contract runs up with sprint then activate my real number).
Edit–> Okay so it turns out Sprint owns boost, but it may turn out I am giving up less money, and it gives me incentive to look into the pay as you go model.
a musing 