Which Smartphone for web surfing on $12 plan?

[fstuff]

Currently I'm on the $80/2000 min/yr plan with free web (QNC). I'm currently using Motorolla's Q9c.

I'm tired of 1/4th dial up speeds and am willing to pay a little more.

What's a good cheap smartphone for web surfing?

[vey9]

I like my Droid OG. A little over 2 years old. I can turn 3g on and off at will.

See my post about "life on the 12" last week. But I really miss qnc. And I miss the things the wm5 could do that Android can't. If my old samsung sch-i730 hadn't died, I would still be using it and then go on the 12.

Because my sch-i730 could do 3g as well as 1x qnc.

[deltadude]

Currently I'm on the $80/2000 min/yr plan with free web (QNC). I'm currently using Motorolla's Q9c.
I'm tired of 1/4th dial up speeds and am willing to pay a little more.
What's a good cheap smartphone for web surfing?

fstuff, what do you mean 1/4th dial up speeds?

What is your budget for a smartphone?

If you are moving to the $12 plan you only get 10 mb of data. Look at this post the quote about before and after text BAL text to 7243. Approx 1.3 mb of data was consumed doing 1 email from email app to my online email, then I checked that email with the email app, then forwarded that email to another acct. Next I loaded up the Howard Forums app, thats it. 1.3 data consumed, in less than 5 minutes.

I am on the TnT1200 plan with 100 mb, the 100 mb is going to be hard to manage for one month. I work at home so I'm on wifi, and several of the places I frequent have wifi, today I was at Lowes and they had wifi. So I keep data off, and only use it when I need something NOW.

You may need to add $10 data = 100 mb, so you would have 250 min talk / 250 text / 110 mb data for $22

[fstuff]

vey9:
the sch-i730 seems exactly what I want. QNC but the ability to switch to faster internet when i need. but whoah.. It's only WinMobile 5?! Not even WinMobile 6.1? How old is this thing?

Any other phones that will do both QNC and high speed internet?
I have the Q9c running WinMobile 6.1. How fast is the internet if i put this phone on the $12 plan?

also, will read your post about "life on the 12"


deltadude:
QNC is at 1/4th dial up speeds (14.4k bits/sec). its free so cant complain. I've had it for years. but only old phones w/certain capabilities/chips can be hacked to access the QNC system.

But now i want something faster when I'm in a time crunch and/or just need info ASAP!

best of both worlds would be QNC and to turn on fast internet when i need on the $12 plan.

for the $12 plan, it's $0.20/MB over the 10mb they give you. so the $10 card is 50meg.

if i go over and use the $10 card, does the data still expire at end of month? even if i add the $10 card on, say, the 26th of the month?

[Boz1]

if i go over and use the $10 card, does the data still expire at end of month? even if i add the $10 card on, say, the 26th of the month?

No. I believe it will initially have a 120 day expiration, and then if not used up in 120 days, every time you add a new monthly PIN, the expiration date will advance 1 month.

[fstuff]

Boz1,

Ahh, so the $10 for 50MB is basically rollover since i have to add a $12 PIN every month on the $12plan?

[vey9]

vey9:
the sch-i730 seems exactly what I want. QNC but the ability to switch to faster internet when i need. but whoah.. It's only WinMobile 5?! Not even WinMobile 6.1? How old is this thing?

Any other phones that will do both QNC and high speed internet?
I have the Q9c running WinMobile 6.1. How fast is the internet if i put this phone on the $12 plan?

also, will read your post about "life on the 12"

It was 7 years old, which is why it died. I think it was the first what became "the smart phone."

I've been reading up about your phone. You don't have to be on the 12 to use 3g on it. All you have to do is switch off qnc. On my phone, I set up the network dialer to dial qnc by default and 3g if I wanted to. It was a while ago, but I think I remember that they use different numbers. It is expensive at $1 a MB, but you could at least get a taste of it. I used to use 3G even when I was on the standard plan when I really needed Google Maps in a hurry.

Searching back posts here, I find one that says you can switch data rates by changing profiles. http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...on-the-fly-Q9C

Maybe you haven't been motivated to hack your phone enough?

The only thing I gained from my new phone is a much better display. When I use the new browsers that support javascripting the pages load really slowly even on wifi. Turn off javascripting and its fast, but then I just as well may be using Opera Mini and I had that on my old phone.

The new apps are nice, but having qnc beats them. How long can you play angry birds?

[Pabster]

QNC...boy you enjoy pain, don't you

Although with Page Plus data rates, you will be in pain on that side too!

[jw530]

I also have the Q9C, and if you just look at email, news, wap versions of websites, even using google maps for traffic, QNC is fine, especially browsing with Opera mini. Even if I had the option to use wifi at home, it is not worth the trouble for the faster speeds, because I can't read text quicker than QNC can download the content in most cases. QNC definitely beats any version of Tzones that was available, because it is the entire web not some walled garden.

[TCAT]

I have wifi at home and work, so need data for surfing maybe 5% of my usage. I doubt I'd ever use more than 10mb on the $12 plan, am I thinking correctly? I'll also never use 250 minutes and don't text. Is the Droid X a good choice? I only get 0-1 bar at home on my VM Optimus-V, will reception with a Droid be any better? Looking for biggest/best screen resolution.

[KenSimone]

I have the original droid (a855), and use the $80 plan. If you're moderately tech savvy, you can root the droid, install droid wall and opera mini, and then use droid wall to only allow opera mini to talk over 3g. This has worked well for me. I surf on the phone outside of wifi a couple of times a month, and it's only a buck or two of data charges. Opera mini works fine w/ gmail, facebook, and all the various other sites I frequent.

Opera Mini: A web browser designed to use as little data as possible
Droid Wall: A firewall, that controls which applications can communicate over 3g/wifi. My configuration is to allow everything to use wifi, and nothing (except opera mini) to use 3g.

[ddyourself]

I have wifi at home and work, so need data for surfing maybe 5% of my usage. I doubt I'd ever use more than 10mb on the $12 plan, am I thinking correctly? I'll also never use 250 minutes and don't text. Is the Droid X a good choice? I only get 0-1 bar at home on my VM Optimus-V, will reception with a Droid be any better? Looking for biggest/best screen resolution.

You'd better read my post about overage data charge, which is right below this one :-)

[KenSimone]

One more thing... Google maps/navigation requires data. If you want turn-by-turn navigation, you should buy a GPS app that downloads maps to the device ahead of time. I've considered buying CoPilot Live (in the app store) for this exact reason, but haven't yet.

[TCAT]

You might try Navfree; I use it on my Galaxy Player and works well.