Yeah I know we're the last of the dinosaurs to get a smartphone, but....
For years we had cell phones that only offered text messaging, picture receiving and actual voice phone services. We decided to update because we wanted to take pictures and finally catch up with the rest of the world.
If anyone reading this finds themselves in the position we were in I'll relate what we've learned the hard way over the past few days hoping it will be of some use.
#1
Make sure to buy an "unlocked' phone. They can be used with any cell phone provider. This way if you get ticked with one carrier you always have the option available to switch.
#2
We have a pay-as-you-go and the thing was set by default to use cellular data when our phone was out of range of our wi-fi. Know it or not cell phones do a lot of things behind your back. All we wanted the phone to do is take pictures (store them), transmit/receive messages and voice calls. We were shocked when it ate up $70 of our balance in just 10 days!
It was doing updates, sending pictures to the cloud, syncing email and a bunch of other stuff. Unbeknownst to us we could turn off the "Data+SIMM" settings putting a quick end to this. Although we have a Windows smartphone perhaps these settings might prove useful for other operating systems as well. It's a simple matter to turn the settings back on if anyone wants to utilize these extremely overpriced features. In our case a penny per 9K may not seem like much for data, but as you can see it can add up REAL QUICK!
If someone doesn't have a wireless router at home I highly recommend getting one.
It all nice and dandy when we want to do things online with the smartphone away from home, but that's not a priority for us. If people exercise a little discipline and wait till they get home it could save them oodles of money they may otherwise spend for unlimited data plans. Also keep in mind even if someone's away from home there are wi-fi hotspots and many employers also make their routers available to employees.
#4
The first thing I recommend before anything else is to go through these settings and find the ones that best suit your needs. If someone doesn't have internet service at home or a landline maybe an unlimited cellar plan may work out to be less expensive. Otherwise I wonder how many are wasting dollars unnecessarily?
