# SmartPhones & 'senior' plans



## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I'm in the market to change my cell service. Currently I have T-Mobile and the plan I'm on is great from a financial standpoint, but the service isn't all that good in my area. Talk/Text coverage is OK around here, but there are some gaping holes in the coverage, but data is all at 2G. The plan I'm on is $30/month for 1500 talk/text and 300mb data. Those amounts are just fine for what I do, or at least what I do with the phone and service I have now.

So I started looking at 'Senior' plans. AT&T and Verizon both have plans for those 65 and older. 200 anytime minutes, 500 night/weekend, unlimited mobile-to-mobile on their network. Both will allow for Smartphones, though Verizon in much more vague about it on their website. So far this is what I've learned.

Both AT&T & Verizon have great coverage here, both have 4G LTE? service in this area. Both cost about $60/month for the 'senior' plan, plus the minimum data they allow for the smartphone. 2Gb for Verizon, 3Gb for AT&T.

Are there other services I should consider that have similar plans?

I'm also very tossed on which phone to get. I've looked at and like the idea of the iPhone and wonder just what I'll miss if I took the free iPhone 4 over the 4S or 5. I'm mostly Mac oriented at home, so that is a strong contender as they would integrate the best.

But then, my eyes ain't what they used to be, so a bigger phone has a certain allure also. I looked at the HTC 8X and Nokia 920 Windows 8 phones and liked both of them. Does anyone know how well they hold up for the long haul? Android isn't out of the picture, but it isn't a strong contender as I'm not overly enamored of my HTC Wildfire. But there are some nice phones there, and maybe even a 'phablet' is something to consider??

Any ideas and suggestions are certainly welcome and encouraged.

thanks.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Out of the box a bit, but how's Sprint in your area? If Sprint coverage is good, you might consider Ting, which uses that network. No iPhone, but good devices and very compelling plans (with credit if you don't use it all.)

www.ting.com


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Thanks for the info and link. I never heard of Ting, but it does look interesting. 

Sprint coverage in my area is 3G according to their coverage map, which isn't a deal killer. 

I'll do some comparisons and juggling to see if Ting is right for me.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Ting is a fairly new service, though their parent company has been around a long time, Tucows. They also have a great domain registration service, their customer service is definitely a level above the major carriers.


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## gov (Jan 11, 2013)

keep in mind there will be much hand wringing, gnashing of teeth, sack cloth and ashes in the executive board room at Verizon if you have a plan that costs less than $100/month.

:eek2:


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Tell me about it! I went to the Verizon store yesterday and they swore there was no way in hell to get a Smartphone and plan for less than $100. AT&T was adamant about their $80 or so minimum. Now in Verizon's defense, the local store is a Verizon retailer and not a company owned store.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

gov said:


> keep in mind there will be much hand wringing, gnashing of teeth, sack cloth and ashes in the executive board room at Verizon if you have a plan that costs less than $100/month.
> 
> :eek2:


Yup, they are expensive and their customer service makes D*'s customer service look great, but you can't beat the network.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> Yup, they are expensive and their customer service makes D*'s customer service look great, but you can't beat the network.
> 
> Rich


Worse than AT&T??


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Tell me about it! I went to the Verizon store yesterday and they swore there was no way in hell to get a Smartphone and plan for less than $100. AT&T was adamant about their $80 or so minimum. Now in Verizon's defense, the local store is a Verizon retailer and not a company owned store.


My son and I are on the same plan and the monthly total is ~ $178. My wife's company pays for her iPhone and service. We dropped our landline and the money we saved by doing that makes up for the high cost of our phones.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Worse than AT&T??


My wife's iPhone is on AT&T and she has problems with reception. I don't know anything else about AT&T's service, but I never miss or get dropped calls on my Verizon phone.

Rich


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## Sixto (Nov 18, 2005)

Love Verizon. Phones $40, Datacard $20, iPad $10, shared data with everything unlimited. Nice to not need to worry about anything any more with minutes and texts and data. I expect that I'll buy every future device with the cell version so always on the network.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

That was interesting, all my posts on this thread just got deleted. What happened?

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Rich said:


> That was interesting, all my posts on this thread just got deleted. What happened?
> 
> Rich


And now they are back???

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Tell me about it! I went to the Verizon store yesterday and they swore there was no way in hell to get a Smartphone and plan for less than $100. AT&T was adamant about their $80 or so minimum. Now in Verizon's defense, the local store is a Verizon retailer and not a company owned store.


About the phones: I looked at all of them in December and my son and I settled on the Sammy Galaxy 3. Best cell phone I've ever had. My housekeeper has an HTC and is always having problems with it. Even bigger than the phone I have are the Galaxy 4 and Note 2 (or whatever it's called).

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Sixto said:


> Love Verizon. Phones $40, Datacard $20, iPad $10, shared data with everything unlimited. Nice to not need to worry about anything any more with minutes and texts and data. I expect that I'll buy every future device with the cell version so always on the network.


Huh. I paid $112 for each Galaxy 3. Should have waited longer.

Rich


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## Sixto (Nov 18, 2005)

Rich said:


> Huh. I paid $112 for each Galaxy 3. Should have waited longer.
> 
> Rich


Yep, the above was plus the data charge. I pay $100 for a shared 10GB, but it's tiered.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Well, after all the faunching around, and reading here (thanks for the replies!), I just went to the local Verizon store a couple blocks away and got the iPhone 5 and the Senior plan.

200 anytime minutes
500 night/weekend
3Gb DATA
unlimited mobile-to-mobile.

$59.99 a month.

Of course, I had to take a printout of the deal so they would admit to it existing! 

Now to clean up the contact list. Mine with Apple goes back over 10 years and is loaded with crap!


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## bidger (Nov 19, 2005)

gov said:


> keep in mind there will be much hand wringing, gnashing of teeth, sack cloth and ashes in the executive board room at Verizon if you have a plan that costs less than $100/month.
> 
> :eek2:


You nailed it...unfortunately.

I signed up for Freedom Pop late last month and have had their WiFi device up and running for a week now. Like Ting they use Sprint's 3G/4G coverage area, but it's for data only. I signed up for 2 GB for $19.99/mo. and I'm liking it so far. I'm using an HP Touchpad w/ CM 10 (Android 4.1.2 Jellybean) ported and the Skype app installed. I also have a Tracfone with Double Minutes for Life and 400+ unused minutes with service until the 11th of next month. When I signed up for it was $99.99 for 365 service days and 1,000 minutes (voice, message, web). Problem is I'd be surprised if it were 2G service and web browsing on 2.2" screen is downright painful. So, I'm trying to decide if Skpe through the tablet would be a suitable alternative. Yes, I'm aware of no 911 calls, something that does give me pause.

I can understand why DISH is aggressively pursuing Sprint. Mobile is a still-growing market, while pay TV is saturated and showing signs of decline. I'm grateful that a company like Freedom Pop exists. It suits my current need for mobile just fine. I pay ~ $100/mo. for High Speed Internet and HDTV and I can't afford to double that for the sake of mobility.


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## bobnielsen (Jun 29, 2006)

Some of the plans offered by resellers can be quite inexpensive, depending on your usage. I don't make that many phone calls so Consumer Cellular works fine for me. My last bill was $35.57 for two phones (I only use wi-fi for data). You can change plans at any time and there is a 10% discount for AARP members. You don't need to use their phones (any phone which works on the ATT network is acceptable and they don't charge for a SIM card). They have a few smartphones but they are mainly last-years models (the prices are without any provider subsidy).


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## gov (Jan 11, 2013)

In Verizon's defense, the company I had before them was awful. They charged for services they were unable to deliver because the closest tower to my house was an old analog one. Their billing system blipped me for services every month (caller ID, call waiting, etc.) that were not supported by that old analog tower. 2 phones I had would occasionally call themselves and waste my minutes, the only way to stop it was to pull the battery pack.

As soon as I could port my # I went to Verizon. That took 3 weeks, the old company was so screwed up they couldn't transfer my #, Verizon had me on a temporary # till all the paperwork was straightened out. I called customer service at the old company serval times and taunted them about how much better Verizon was than they were.

Not too long ago, I noticed I had 4 bars of signal near that (infamous) tower on my Razr-M, so somebody must have finally upgraded the darn thing.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

After a day on Verizon I'm finding myself wondering why I didn't do this quite awhile back. Call quality in my area is much better on Verizon than it is on T-Mobile, and the data service is miles better. TMo is 2G here, Verizon and AT&T are 4G/LTE. Sprint is 3G. After talking to some friends that have different services around here, the bottom line is that if you want the best coverage for voice/text, it is Verizon and Alltel and data is better on Verizon since Alltel is EDVO(?).

With my calling patterns and useage, the Senior Plans that both Verizon and AT&T have are fine with me. Those I talked to that had AT&T said that the service with them was a bit spotty and more narrowly around the major highways where Verizon is really strong nearly everywhere. I live in the boonies so that is a concern.

I was very surprised at the FaceTime performance. I played around with it and tried my daughter. I didn't even know she had an iPhone as the subject never came up. I called and she answered and the quality was great on the picture and sound. I tried it both with wifi and using the 4G/LTE and the difference wasn't much at all and I'm on 6M/.5M DSL service! A question. If I'm on wifi at home and call via Facetime, does it use my cell for the voice and wifi for data or wifi for both??

LLoyd


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## Sixto (Nov 18, 2005)

If on WiFi, it's all over WiFi. It's a video conferencing session.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Thanks Sixto.

I did find that on at least some iPhones, that it will also work with my cellular data if I'm away from the wifi.


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## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

lparsons21 said:


> Well, after all the faunching around, and reading here (thanks for the replies!), I just went to the local Verizon store a couple blocks away and got the iPhone 5 and the Senior plan.
> 
> 200 anytime minutes
> 500 night/weekend
> ...


Att has the same exact offer, and you don't need to bring a copy of the offer to get it setup and a corporate store - just set my Father-in-law up on it a few months ago, he even got a nice iphone for 99 cents

In this area ATT coverage is vastly superior to sprint or Verizon's


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Here the best coverage is Verizon & Alltel. AT&T is a bit behind around here especially if you get away from the main highways. Not horrible mind you, just not as good.

I could have gotten the iPhone 4 for 99 cents, but after looking and thinking about the differences, I wanted the iPhone 5 because it is the only one that does 4G/LTE.


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## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

lparsons21 said:


> Here the best coverage is Verizon & Alltel. AT&T is a bit behind around here especially if you get away from the main highways. Not horrible mind you, just not as good.
> 
> I could have gotten the iPhone 4 for 99 cents, but after looking and thinking about the differences, I wanted the iPhone 5 because it is the only one that does 4G/LTE.


Since I don't use data on the Iphone for anything but corporate business speed does not matter, which by the way is a corporate policy of mine. As far as coverage, phones are issued to employees depending on where they are located and which service has the best coverage.

As far as personal, again same policy, email is the primary use, have not need of streaming music, video or updated a socials site every time I or someone around me takes a breath. functionally outside of tiered data connection there is no required functionality between the 5 and the 4/4s so no need to spend the money for the latest tech toy


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I can understand your position and use. And frankly, I don't need 4G, 3G would have been good enough. Most of my use for the data is with the golf gps software and other gps useage. I have most other things set to 'manual' if I need to get something from the 'net. My email on the phone isn't of much value since I seldom am interested in reading it on the go and I have no 'business' needs since I'm retired.

I'm learning to love Facetime, but I know I'll have to be careful with it when I'm outside of the house as it can eat data pretty fast.

The iPhone 5's slightly bigger screen is a plus to me and it was size of screen that made me seriously consider a Windows phone. Android is a non-starter for me, my previous phone had it and I never really liked it much. Unfortunately the bigger screens are mostly Android.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm learning to love Facetime, but I know I'll have to be careful with it when I'm outside of the house as it can eat data pretty fast.


Gizmodo estimates Facetime uses about 3MB/minute, so really not that bad. If they're right, looks like 100 minutes of Facetime would only be 10% of your monthly data cap. Not sure what your daughter's data cap is, however, or if she's on WiFi when you call her.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Not as bad as I had thought.

Generally I would use it with wifi here. She's on some 'unlimited' grandfathered plan, so not an issue for her either. Both my sisters are on some unlimited plan also and have iPhones. One's with ATT, the other's with Sprint.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

I don't know why I didn't mention this before, but one thing to keep in mind, the new iPhones will likely be announced next month. Not necessarily anything big (I'm thinking minor increment over the 5), but always something I make sure my users know. Some may not care about new models or price drops on the previous one) but it hopefully covers me so that they're not upset they are locked into a phone for two years that was just replaced


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## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

Steve said:


> Gizmodo estimates Facetime uses about 3MB/minute, so really not that bad. If they're right, looks like 100 minutes of Facetime would only be 10% of your monthly data cap. Not sure what your daughter's data cap is, however, or if she's on WiFi when you call her.


wasn't that done on a jail broken phone? have not see a retest on the version of facetime that works on a unmodified version of the IOS


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

wingrider01 said:


> wasn't that done on a jail broken phone? have not see a retest on the version of facetime that works on a unmodified version of the IOS


I think at the time Gizmodo measured data usage, back in August, 2010, Facetime was wifi-only, so jailbreaking was the only way you could test it over cellular.

Looks pretty easy to check what Facetime currently consumes. Like Gizmodo, you can do a "before" and "after" reading on the "Cellular Network Data" info screen, and divide it by the actual Facetime session time.


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## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

Steve said:


> I think at the time Gizmodo measured data usage, back in August, 2010, Facetime was wifi-only, so jailbreaking was the only way you could test it over cellular.
> 
> Looks pretty easy to check what Facetime currently consumes. Like Gizmodo, you can do a "before" and "after" reading on the "Cellular Network Data" info screen, and divide it by the actual Facetime session time.


interesting for such a limited usage app, we utilize Cisco Jabber, it works across all platforms not just one specific brand


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## Supramom2000 (Jun 21, 2007)

I have had Verizon for almost 10 years now. We had to switch when we moved to the boonies as well. It was the only service that worked at our house.

I have the grandfathered unlimited data plan and upgraded to the Galaxy SIII last December, and was going to lose my unlimited plan. One of my sons decided to get the new iPhone at the same time, and in order to get it free, he set up his own Verizon account with a new phone number and everything. So I had to call customer service and give permission plus get him removed from our family plan. I got the nicest woman on the phone who worked for over 30 minutes and came up with a back door way to keep me on the grandfathered data plan. She also changed our plan type and saved us more money.

That was the best customer service I have ever had.


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