Smart phone - Which service & which phone?

[GlennB]

This past weekend did it for me. I decided to get off my butt and get a smart phone instead of just talking about it. We were camped with friends in an open area just south of Quartzsite, AZ.
Friday AM we were getting ready to return to San Diego when I got a call asking if I knew about the winds along I-8. Nope, I hadn't heard a word. I used my cell phone to call Calif. Hwy. Road Conditions Info. The recording for I-8 said a Wind Warning was in effect in the general areas of Boulevard and Jacumba
and high profile vehicles, and on and on were advised to stay off the road. So, what do I do??? Now, if I had a smart phone I figure I could at least have checked one or more weather sites. As it was I could only call some friends and ask them to do some checking for me.
I am now home in San Diego (turns out the Wind Warning was, how should I put it, not accurate. Sort of like the weather forecast for NYC & Philly for today. Huge snowstorm was predicted. It snowed some, but nothing major as I understand it).
Now, I think I'll start shopping for a smart phone. I'm not a heavy user of cell phones, don't do Facebook, etc. But I would like to go online when I want to, have a hotspot so I can use my laptop online whether or not our campground/RV park has wi-fi, etc. (I know not to do NetFlix and things like that 'cause they are data hogs.)
We plan to hit the road for about 4 months this spring and I would like to be all set up by then. By the way, when traveling we stay off the interstates and take US & state highways when feasible. We avoid large towns and congestion as much as possible.
So, which carrier should I go with; Verizon (I'd really prefer to avoid a 2 yr contract although I understand Verizon has the best overall coverage of them all), Sprint, or T-Mobile (doesn't require a contract but as I understand it, their coverage isn't nearly as good as Verizon)?
So, I ask your advice. What do you suggest? Is T-Mobile's coverage really that bad? Is Verizon that much better?

This morning I went into a Verizon store and a T-Mobile store. I gave the same story of how I think I'd use their device.
The T-Mobile guy said I'd probably use 1, maybe 2 GB of data/month. He said cost would be approx. $50/mo plus cost of a phone.
The Verizon guy said I'd probably need at least 10 GB at a cost of a little over $100/mo which I think included a basic smart phone.
Also, do I need a pretty fancy smart phone such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 or S5 or would a pretty basic one such as the LG L90 be OK for my use? I really don't know and would like your input.

Thanx,
Glenn

[8_1_Van]

I dumped Verizon after my last 2 year contract and switched to T Mobile for a fraction of the cost.I don't need more than 100 minutes a month since we still have a land line home phone and I text most of the time.


T Mobile SIM kit at Walmart

I have the $30 a month charged to my Amex card every month and there is no contract.

My phone is the 6.44" Sony Xperia Z Ultra

[2oldman]

Verizon, HTC One w/hotspot. 15gig. Coverage is everywhere. Not cheap.

[Skylark]

GlennB, my wife and my experiences with Verizon for her and straightalk for me over the past two years with 2 iphone 5. On voice, I could use straightalk as good as she did on Verizon. I did just have 3G on straightalk, most of the time could get 1 mb down and .75 to 1 mb upload where she had 4g LTE and could get 15 to 30 mb down and 15 to 20 mb upload at the same place. Now I understand straightalk you can now get 4g lte speed but still can not get speeds like Verizon.
Verizon now has a prepaid plan for $45 with unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 500 mb of data at 4g lte speed. If you set auto pay, you get another 500 mb data free for a total of 1 gpb of data. If you need more data, buy 3 gigs of data for $20 and can be used up to three months. I just got a new iPhone 6 plus for Christmas and switched to Verizon and hard to believe the difference on data service in my area between Verizon and straightalk on the Verizon towers. I live in NC western mountains and have seen about 30 mb plus download and 20 mb plus upload.
You do have to provide your own phone on the Verizon prepaid plan.
On the iPad air data, I use t-Mobile free 200 mb per month and use wifi hotspot from the iPhone 6 for more data.

[Rolin]

We use T-Mobile and have traveled from West Coast to East Coast (Northern States), Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. T-mobile partners with Rogers for Canadian coverage. Cost $45/mo w/500mb of data which we exceeded only once.

Coverage is not as good as Verizon, but I felt T-Mobiles coverage was pretty good. It seems that coverage depends on the plan you use. I believe that the T-Mobile plan we have allows xx amount of roaming on AT&T in the states and Rogers in Canada. So we basically have access to T-Mobile and AT&T towers.

We just use voice, text, email (sending photos), looking up info on the internet, some gps map use and 99% of the time we don't have to worry about running out of data.

Just depends on how you will use it and where you will use it

[wcjeep]

Bucky Badger wrote:
One thing to remember about Straight Talk Verizon service. It doesn't use partner towers so you won't get the exact same service Verizon customers get. At least that's the way it was last year.

This is usually true for most prepaid services. In town the service will be about the same. Start roaming in remote areas and you may not have the exact service as post paid. I would avoid T-Mobile. Unless there is solid wifi at all locations you will not be satisfied. I have been to one place where AT&T out performed my Verizon. All other locations Verizon easily worked the best. Part of this is the network. The other part is the 3G tecnology. Look up CDMA vs GSM if you want. Verizon is CDMA. The differences are not as striking as they used to be.

Do you want a small screen? Medium Screen? Large screen? Best signal? Easy to use? Best screen?

Apple Iphones are great for people that don't want to change anything. They also have a great ecosystem. All fingerprint readers can be hacked. However, the Iphone fingerprint reader does work great. Avoid the Iphone 6plus. It's too big for most people. Easily bent too. The Iphone 6 or 5plus has modern internals with decent screen. Most Iphones have a decent camera. Avoid anything older than the 5plus.

The Samsung S5 is water resistant. Screen is great with decent camera. Also supports wireless charging. As a new user I recommend avoiding the Note series. The internals are top notch. It's too big for most.

The LG G3 has the best screen. Battery power suffers because of it. Odd button arrangement that some appreciate. Decent camera.

Most Motorolas have excellent radios. This means slightly better signal in the boonies. Motorolas on average have sub par cameras. The Moto X is a good phone. Go for the newer version if you have a choice.

HTC makes a nice looking phone. Cameras are also sub par. For 2014 they tried some camera gimmick called mega pixels. Rumor is the upcoming 2015 will overcome this shortfall.

Sony Experia Z3 might be available on Verizon? Not sure. It was rumored to be very delayed on Verizon. Some like the Sony, others don't. I have not used a Sony phone yet.


These are my opinions. I didn't go into detail on everything.

[n7bsn]

Yes, honestly 1 to 2 gig is fine.
If you avoid watching videos even 1 gig is fine.
T-Mobile is iffy outside of urban areas (I have T-Mobile)

Verizon is probably the best rural (nation wide) coverage, AT&T is probably 2nd.

If you want a device/service for low bandwidth use, look at the AXS-Trio, sold only by Walmart. This comes with 200Mbyte/month(T-Mobile) FREE (for life). Cost was $150 when I bought mine four months ago.
It runs on Android and runs most any Ap, including all the common RV related ones.

[FlatBroke]

Had to dumb Verizon phones. Just talk $85 per month. Bought two refurbished iPhone 4s and use Tracfone triple minute talk, text, data cards purchased from eBay. Think it's costing us together $10-15 a month. Best switch we ever made, very happy.

[Tom_Barb]

GoPackGo wrote:
Most will agree that Verizon has the best overall nationwide coverage, especially for a fulltimer (me).
Tim

we found that Verizon had very poor coverage, as soon as you left town you lost coverage. our kids had it for a while, and changed to AT&T.

[8ntw8tn]

About a year ago I started searching for a new provider because the old provider (US Cellular) provided only a small amount of data while roaming and then the speed slowed down to dial-up speed. My mom is also on my plan and she lives in an area where many of the providers are no available. Ultimately I chose Verizon with 3GB of data. So far, after several months of use, it's been very satisfactory, though not necessarily the least expensive. We use wifi whenever we can and use the data when wifi is not available and when we want a secure connection. Only once have we used more than 75% of our data plan. After considering the Galaxy S5 we chose to go with the iphone 5S. The features were very similar, but most of our family had the iphone products. We thought they would be able to provide some personalized assistance when we ran into technical roadblocks; turned out to be correct. Good luck in your search. Hope this helps.

[Ductape]

Consumer cellular.

[wildtoad]

One to two gigs will be fine for most of what you currently plan to do. Start low and increase if you need it. I have AT&T and have had some dead spots but overall am happy with it. I can use my IPhone to do everything I need to do while on the road. If I want a bigger screen for some activity then I use my IPad and use the IPhone as a hotspot. Easy to setup and it works great.

Over the past 20 years I have had all kinds of phones and so far have found the iPhone the easiest to setup and use. Others may have more features that I would not need and they are good phones. But I just like the iPhone's.

[2112]

I'm posting this using my Samsung Note II through Verizon. I check the weather, traffic, download Kindle books, read and post on forums and rarely go over 1G a month.

[GoPackGo]

Most will agree that Verizon has the best overall nationwide coverage, especially for a fulltimer (me).

I wanted Verizon but didn't want to pay their rates so I went to Walmart and got a Straight Talk Iphone and signed up for the $45/month unlimited talk/text/data plan with Straight Talk. But data is not exactly unlimited. I think you get 2 Gigs at high speed and then the remainder of the month is slower. Ask them to make sure.

I keep track of my data usage and generally do not use over 1 gig/month. Just don't stream videos or leave Google Maps on all the time and you won't use all that much data.

One thing about Straight Talk is that certain phones run on specific carrier's systems. So if you want Verizon (and you do), you need to figure out which of their phones run on the Verizon system.

Tim

[Naio]

The tmobile guy was right and the verizon guy was full of crap.

If you don't watch video on your phone (youtube or tv shows) then you will be fine with 1-2 gb.

On the other hand, one of the cool things you can do with a smart phone is use it as a wifi connection for your computer or tv, and watch those tv shows :). But just using it to surf the net (on phone or computer) doesn't use many gb.

In my experience, Tmobile works in all the small towns (and big ones), but is less likely than verizon to work in remote areas far from the nearest gas station.

Tmobile also has great customer service and verizon is famous for having the opposite.

Edited to add: You know what is awesome, besides weather reports and road condition reports? Webcams. The state highway departments run them. You can SEE the road before you drive on it. I find this even more useful than text reports, during snow season.

You can google coverage maps for all the carriers you are interested in, and see what looks best in the areas you like to go.