Well, no longer. I finally finalized ordering my new phone and plan on New Year's Eve, and much to my surprise it arrived already this afternoon.
Anyway, I've had the same exact Sprint PCS phone plan since 2001.
500 anytime minutes
Unlimited Night and Weekends starting at 8pm and going until 7am
Unlimited Wireless Web Access
Sprint PCS Voice Command
Sprint PCS Business Connections
A coverage area on Sprint;s network anywhere in the continental U.S.
and all the standard bells and whistles one got with their cell phone plan back then
I was paying $55/month for that
Here was my phone:
I actually started off with a Samsung flip phone in 2001, but I didn't really care for it and liked the speakerphone feature my friend had on the phone he got that just came out in 2002, so I switched to one of those, the Sanyo SCP-4700 pictured above.
It was a good quality phone. Very durable. Excellent reception. Extremely long battery-life. One of the nicer displays at that time. A good speakerphone. Text-based web browser with limited image capability.
This past April though, the Wireless Web feature of the phone stopped working because Sprint was no longer supporting it (very annoying) and for the past three months it stopped being able to receive text messages. And the reception was no longer excellent. Sometimes my phone wouldn't ring, but yet I would have a voicemail. Or I would have a voicemail, but it wouldn't alert me until the next time I made an outgoing call. Frustrating things like that which started making the phone unreliable.
Oh, and on two separate occasions in the past 6 months, people made Zach Morris jokes when I would use my phone. People were especially bewildered by the antenna that you pull up when you use the thing.
I always said I would be getting a new phone and plan once I got around to finding the right phone and plan that suited my needs. That day has finally arrived.
I'm still with Sprint.
I went with the HTC Mogul PPC-6800
It is a PocketPC or Smartphone, PDA/Phone hybrid, etc.
I'm sure someone will point out that it isn't really any smaller than my old phone, it just has slightly different dimensions.
Screw you, I say
This is an awesome phone. I did an extensive amount of research on this (which is why it took me so long to get a new phone, I like to be thorough) and this is better than the iPhone in pretty much every way that would be significant to most people, or at least that would be significant to me. It really is not that big compared to some phones, and it is roughly the same size as an iPhone I believe (perhaps slightly smaller even, now I forget).
It retails for $550.
Obviously no one ever pays retail for their phone, because they get a significant discount with a two-year service agreement. So you can get this phone for $400. Maybe $300 in some cases.
I guilted them into giving me this phone for $175. They do kind of owe me.
And here is my new $50/mo phone plan:
- 1250 Anytime Minutes
- Unlimited Text Messaging
- Sprint Vision or Power Vision Included Free
- Unlimited Web access
- Unlimited email and instant messaging - AOL, MSN and Yahoo
- Unlimited Sprint PCS Picture Mail(sm) with Video Mail
- Unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes Starting At 7PM
- Unlimited Mobile To Mobile Calling
- Nationwide Long Distance
- Voice Mail
- Caller ID
- Call Waiting
- Numeric Paging
- Three-Way Calling
- Call Forwarding ($0.20/min)
- Sprint PCS Directory Assistance ($1.40 per call, plus airtime)
I will do my best to get this thing set-up so I can bring it with me on Friday night. That has suddenly become my top priority between right now and tomorrow night
Does anyone have any pointers on how I should proceed? I have never set up either a PDA or Smartphone before, and I have also never switched cell phones myself before. I am very adept when it comes to computers and technology and I'm sure I can figure most of this stuff out eventually (especially with the assistance of the provided literature and website), but I thought I'd check to see if anyone here had any tips that I might not think of while setting this up.
For example, I do not believe there is a way to transfer my phone book from my old phone to my new phone, which is unfortunate because that would save me a significant amount of time (I have almost 200 entries in my phone book). So I'm going to have to do that manually. What would be the easiest way to input that data into my PC so I can then import it into my new phone? Outlook?
I've suddenly started to become a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of getting this thing up and running the way I want it to. I haven't even finished taking it out of the packaging!
So, any thoughts anyone might have on this will be greatly appreciated.
I will just have to make sure that I don't completely counteract all the increased productivity tools by spending too much time using this thing to go on RealGM wherever I happen to be
But I must say that I am looking forward to being able to post in the game thread from while sitting in my seats at the BC.
