Phone advice
Jun. 17th, 2013 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalMy mother has decided that it's time for all of us to upgrade our cell phones (and possibly our service plan), so while they were here this weekend, we started looking at options and were immediately overwhelmed.
1. Apparently we are all getting smartphones? I currently have the LG EnV Touch, but the touch-screen is really temperamental and it's so slow that it's mostly useless except for checking email and the occasional simple web search. My parents both have non-smartphones (dumb phones?) without touch-screens. So I would like a better phone that can do ALL THE THINGS, whereas my parents are probably fine without all the bells and whistles, but they both think they want smartphones for some reason.
Thoughts or suggestions for brands/models you like? Keeping in mind that we're trying to keep them within a reasonable price range (so... probably no iPhone). Any features I absolutely need? Or phones that are good for Luddite parents?
2. We have had Verizon Wireless for as long as we've had cell phones, I think, but my dad hates Verizon because they get terrible cell service in their house, and my mom wants a cheaper plan (even though they are going to have to add data plans with their new smartphones). We currently have a family plan for the three of us, and from what I could tell, it seems like it's not going to be any cheaper to switch to another carrier, unless we go to one of the no-contract prepaid plans. I'm assuming it's still cheaper to stay on the family plan, rather than get my own, but I'm open to options.
Recommendations? Anybody who actually LIKES their cell phone provider? Or has any experience with those prepaid plans?
1. Apparently we are all getting smartphones? I currently have the LG EnV Touch, but the touch-screen is really temperamental and it's so slow that it's mostly useless except for checking email and the occasional simple web search. My parents both have non-smartphones (dumb phones?) without touch-screens. So I would like a better phone that can do ALL THE THINGS, whereas my parents are probably fine without all the bells and whistles, but they both think they want smartphones for some reason.
Thoughts or suggestions for brands/models you like? Keeping in mind that we're trying to keep them within a reasonable price range (so... probably no iPhone). Any features I absolutely need? Or phones that are good for Luddite parents?
2. We have had Verizon Wireless for as long as we've had cell phones, I think, but my dad hates Verizon because they get terrible cell service in their house, and my mom wants a cheaper plan (even though they are going to have to add data plans with their new smartphones). We currently have a family plan for the three of us, and from what I could tell, it seems like it's not going to be any cheaper to switch to another carrier, unless we go to one of the no-contract prepaid plans. I'm assuming it's still cheaper to stay on the family plan, rather than get my own, but I'm open to options.
Recommendations? Anybody who actually LIKES their cell phone provider? Or has any experience with those prepaid plans?
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Date: Jun. 17th, 2013 08:37 pm (UTC)My father, who kept his Nokia 3310 as long as he could (and probably longer than he should have) moved last year to a Samsung Galaxy S2 and is very happy with it.
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Date: Jun. 17th, 2013 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 19th, 2013 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 19th, 2013 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 17th, 2013 08:55 pm (UTC)He got a "nice" -- for Virgin Mobile -- smartphone, a Motorola something or other. It's definitely no iPhone, and in fact if he's somewhere with wireless he prefers his iPod touch to his phone. But it's pretty good.
I got the cheapest smartphone I could, an LG Optimus. Anything internety is pretty slow, though not so much that I don't use it. Still, I mostly use it for texting or for the app to check when my bus is coming, or sometimes for email or web-browsing on the bus, when I don't have anything else to do anyway. Some of the slowness is the Sprint 3G, but some of it is the phone, since my partner's is definitely faster.
The coverage isn't as good as the regular carriers, but that only affects you in rural areas.
Overall, I definitely prefer it to what we had before. If we could afford it I'd love a nicer smartphone on a faster network, but it's pretty good.
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Date: Jun. 17th, 2013 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 04:20 am (UTC)I've only had some problems with service occasionally- when people would apparently call me, but my phone would never ring. It doesn't seem like that's happened lately though.
But it's nice to pay $35 a month (as opposed to Seamus paying $90 a month for sprint). Not the greatest phone, but I'll probably wait a while to get a new one (since you have to pay higher phone prices without the contract rebates and such).
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Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 06:16 pm (UTC)Not the greatest phone, but I'll probably wait a while to get a new one (since you have to pay higher phone prices without the contract rebates and such).
Yeah, the thing I worry about with the prepaid is that if I don't like the phone, I feel like I'm stuck with it forever, because I paid full price for it. (Last time we got new phones, my dad hated his, so he tossed it and started using my old flip phone, but he didn't care because the new phone had been free w/ the Verizon contract.)
P.S. I got the invitation to your shower yesterday! \o/ My mom said she saw your mom somewhere, and they were talking about it, so I was already planning to be home that weekend.
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Date: Jun. 22nd, 2013 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 23rd, 2013 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 02:30 am (UTC)We were on T-Mobile's family plan for many, many years but when we moved we had to switch to another carrier because we had no landlines and our cells had zero reception at the new house.
So we went through the new-phone-new-plan deal not all that long ago.
We ended up going with Verizon, and they've been fine, but they're not cheap, and there is some initial stuff that ended up making problems. When we got the phones, we told the salesman that we had really bad reception on our old plan, so we needed to know we could bring them back if we needed to and still had no reception. He said it was fine and we could within thirty days, but he was full of it, since there was a restock fee if you did that. (Our reception was fine, but we had a mix up on the phones my sister and I bought where we thought we had the one-step-newer model, but didn't, and tried to swap it out and then ran into the fee problems.)
If reception wasn't an issue, I think I'd probably have gone with T-Mobile at this point, as they've got their new no-contract thing, allow payments on all their phones as far as I can tell, and allow you to bring in any outside phone to put on their plans.
The newest smartphones and the kings of the market currently are the HTC One, The Galaxy 4, and the Nexus 4, more or less, with a few others. (And obviously the newest Iphone, but there's not much variance in the Apple phones so I was skipping over them.) But because the Galaxy has the new model and are pimping it, you can get good deals on the Galaxy III. And with T-Mobile at least, I think you can buy it from anywhere and bring it to their store to put on your plan. (Verify that before buying of course, but that's how I understood it!)
Personally, I like Samsung and HTC phones the best. But I've got a motorola Razr that works great, and they release new models about every other week (it seems like) so the earlier models might be fairly low-priced, for smart phones.
The main thing with any Android phone is to know whether or not you care about getting operating system updates. All carriers and manufacturers skin their own version of Android, which means that they have to tailor every new OS update for each phone. Because of the speed of phone releases, they very rarely bother updating older phones, or even newer phones that aren't their flagship models. Android's newest OS is Jellybean, and a large portion of the smartphone market isn't running it, it runs either Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwich. Even new phones aren't on the newest version of the OS.
The only product line that gets the latest OS updates are Google's own Nexus line, which also ship with the least amount of bloatware because they don't box in the carrier tie ins the way others do. But they're pricey and rarely go down.
If not having the newer OS doesn't matter to you, then older phones aren't much of a problem, though with older OS the packaged keyboards are often kind of crappy (same with a lot of the carrier-keyboards that they ship with instead) so you might want to download new ones.
With Luddite parents, I've found that the more features it has, the more confused they are. Apple's IOS is the easiest for them to learn I think, but Android can be pretty simple too, and it's getting to be more unified so that it doesn't vary so much, which helps.
With mine, the biggest issue was screen size. Smaller screens made them nuts not just because they're harder to read, but because my dad has big, blunt fingers and has problems hitting the right thing. He never really warmed to a smart phone for that reason, and still uses an older, non-smart phone.
My mom tried a hybrid phone, but it was pretty awful. It was that inbetween type of phone that has a keyboard but also a rudimentary touch screen, but the touch screen wasn't like a smart phone's, it was more pressure based, and she had trouble getting it to respond. She went back to a regular messaging phone with no touch screen, but she wants a smart phone next time.
To teach them to use it, I basically set it up for them and pulled anything "extra" off of the home screen and then let them play with it and answered questions. My mom is pretty good with it now (she has a tablet she uses to read), and dad is getting it, but he still won't use a phone, just the larger tablet. As they caught on to how it works, then I added on apps or things I thought they would like, or showed them how to do stuff they wanted to try.
If they want smart phones, I would say let them loose in a phone store for a while, shoo off salesmen, and just let them play and see what they like and can tolerate. Once you figure out basics, then you can go comparison shopping for cheaper-but-similar, and deals outside of the expensive carrier stores, but they have the widest range of things set up to play with.
The Verizon near us also offers smartphones/tablet classes. I haven't been to one to see if they're useful, but it might be something for them to look into! I think there's also some tutorial videos and things on youtube if you hunt around a bit.
As I said above, sorry if any of this is telling you stuff you already know!
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Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 06:33 pm (UTC)My parents would like to get rid of their landline if they can, so they want better reception at the house. I have to have a landline (condo rules, blargh), so it doesn't matter to me, but I tend to think that in general Verizon has the best coverage?
Android's newest OS is Jellybean, and a large portion of the smartphone market isn't running it, it runs either Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwich.
LMFAO at those names. And I thought the Apple OS "big cats" theme was silly.
How critical is a new OS? Like, will I have trouble with running apps if I have an older OS? I'm clearly not all about cutting-edge technology here, lol, so as long as stuff works, I don't care if it's the newest version or not. Good to know about the keyboards, though.
My parents are actually the opposite re: size. My dad doesn't want anything big and clunky to carry around, although I wonder if he might have the same problem with his big fingers and the touch-screen. My mom also said, "There is no way I'm watching a movie on that dinky thing," so she doesn't care how big the screen is, lol.
It was that inbetween type of phone that has a keyboard but also a rudimentary touch screen, but the touch screen wasn't like a smart phone's, it was more pressure based, and she had trouble getting it to respond.
OH GOD, that's kinda what I have now, and it's pretty terrible. I can use it well enough for basic things, but trying to use the web browser is a nightmare.
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Date: Jun. 19th, 2013 06:33 am (UTC)If Verizon is doing no-contracts now, then that's new and I know nothing about it, so I'm not helpful at all! But yeah, in general I think - especially with places that have dicey reception - Verizon seems to be the best. Verizon is fine at our house and T-Mobile was nonexistent. Just if you're worried about it, be aware that if you DO get them home and there's no reception, you'll pay a restocking fee on any returned phones, even if they come back immediately. (Ideally if you have a friend/family on Verizon, just try their phones from your place to check first, but we'd just moved, so knew no one and it wasn't an option!)
LMFAO at those names. And I thought the Apple OS "big cats" theme was silly.
Hee, I actually like the names of Apple and Android because unlike the numbers, I can remember them. Though clearly not that well since with the OS, I actually was wrong, since I skipped a version. lol. The progression was Gingerbread, HONEYCOMB, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean. Sorry!
How critical is a new OS?
In general, I don't think it's too big of an issue. If I were phone shopping, I personally wouldn't want to go any further back than Ice Cream Sandwich, because if it's not updated to that it's definitely not going to get upgrade support, and since Android is close to another update (whether it's just a number update to Jelly Bean or the new OS, I do not think we know yet), there may start to be a time when apps and things don't run on the older ones.
But for now, there isn't a ton of problem with that that I've seen. Because Android is so fragmented, they seem to have backwards compatibility for pretty much all of the major apps at least. Google is also starting to release some parts of Jelly Bean as standalone app downloads too. (Like the keyboard.)
The older OS won't have stuff like Google Next, or some of the bells and whistles of the new one, but if you're not someone who relies on that stuff right now, I don't think it would matter much. And there are other apps that can pretty much mimic those behaviors more or less. The accessibility features and voice stuff are all pretty improved in the newer OS as well, but I can't really speak to how much because I don't use them!
My parents are actually the opposite re: size.
If your parents don't have problems with arthritic fingers or shaky hands, (or vision) than the screen size probably isn't as much of an issue, yes! My dad's fingers might be worse than yours! He was in construction, and he's diabetic, so he doesn't have a ton of feeling in his fingertips and has pretty decent calluses, which is part of the problem for him.
OH GOD, that's kinda what I have now, and it's pretty terrible. I can use it well enough for basic things, but trying to use the web browser is a nightmare.
Yes! It was awful. So not responsive and it wouldn't display anything anyway even if you went through the effort, it was so limited! There was actually someone at the store looking at one of those when we were getting our phones and I was like NOT TO BE NOSY, BUT THOSE ARE AWFUL, JUST FYI.
In general I think with smartphones the smartphone+keyboard is kind of not necessary, with the real touchscreen. My first smartish phone was a Sidekick, so I had the keyboard and when I had to give it up I went for one with a keyboard because it was what I knew, but since it was also a full touchscreen, I found that I almost never bothered opening it up to type unless I was doing a really long text or something, so I skipped that when we upgraded/changed providers.
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Date: Jun. 19th, 2013 08:24 pm (UTC)In general I think with smartphones the smartphone+keyboard is kind of not necessary, with the real touchscreen.
Heh, yeah, as long as the touch-screen ACTUALLY WORKS, the keyboard's not necessary. (My phone is doing this awesome thing now where the touch-screen TURNS OFF when I make a call, and no amount of button-pushing will make it come back on, so if I have to dial an extension or put in my voice mail password, I have to open it up and use the keyboard. ARGH.)
I had trouble getting the hang of the touch-screen at first, which is why I went for the combo, but I've been using the Kindle Fire touch-screen with no problems (although that is definitely bigger than a phone), so I'm comfortable without the keyboard.
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Date: Jun. 20th, 2013 04:54 am (UTC)I think once you're used to a touch screen, it's not TOO bad to transition to a teenier one, so I doubt you'll have much problem.
Hopefully you guys can find something that suits each of you. (If they both like the same one, definitely try to get your folks to buy the same model so you only have to show them how to do things once! lol. Tech support for family can be hair-pulling-inducing.)
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Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 18th, 2013 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 19th, 2013 02:43 pm (UTC)