I have loved my Fascinate and my wife has loved her Droid X since the day we bought them. What we do not love is out Verizon bill of $175 a month. I could go into the ins and outs of our 3 phone and options, and discounts, but why bother. When the bill shows up it is always right at $178 A MONTH.
This is more than I spend on internet, netflix (we cut the cord so no cable), xbox live, water and trash COMBINED!! sorry for the heavy use of caps here, but crap that's a lot of money.
We just switched to Virgin Mobile and bought 2 optimus V's. We were originally going to wait for the Moto Triumph to come out but I wanted to beat the rate increases coming in 2 weeks and also the optimus is a lot less expensive. I went into this telling myself that I needed to be ready for disappointment in the hardware, but I was way off. Here is the break down:
Optimus V cost - $150 x 2 = $300 (not bad considering no contract and no subsidy)
Plans - $25 a month for me
$45 a month for wife
$6 a month for dumbphone 3rd line
Total plans with tax - $81
So basically I just spent $300 to save $100 a month from now on - even that would be great but we can also sell our old devices so there is a solid $350 -400 in additional cash in.
Here are the 2 caveats - you need good Virgin (Sprint) coverage where you work live and play. You also need to get out of the VZW ET fees. I did this by arguing that VZW coverage was bad at my house - 2 months ago they sent me a FREE network extender to try and help with this - it didnt as my internet connection has crappy QoS apparently regardless of tweaking. When this did not help I told them I was leaving but did not mention it was for monetary savings. Bonus - I now have a network extender for VZW to sell as well - additional $150 cash in.
The point of this thread was to share with all of you that have helped me so much in the past here. The optimus V is a great device. I was very concerned at the paltry 600mhz processor but it flies - mostly thanks to the separate graphics processor. I would also note that the internal program storage on the Optimus is sorely lacking, but I just Apps2SD everything and I am doing fine. The main trade off that I feel during use is not speed, but screen size and screen quality (oh how I love thee AMOLED) - but that is just not worth $100 a month to me.
I also happen to own an Asus transformer so when I want some hardcore mobile gaming or big screen goodness I use it - heck even if I did not own one already I could buy one in 4 months just with the savings from VZW. Optimus stealth tethers like a champ - so no additional charge there for tablet interent either.
One more suggestion - I got a burner phone from Virgin that I carried and used for a week to check network coverage - it was actually better than VZW in quite a few places that I frequent but YMMV.
I am very happy with my decision, but will miss tinkering with the Fascinate. Thanks again for all the help and maybe I will see some of the more frugal of you in the Optimus forum. I will probably still peek in here from time to time anyway.
One more little thing to mention - Netflix works on the Optimus - lol
This is more than I spend on internet, netflix (we cut the cord so no cable), xbox live, water and trash COMBINED!! sorry for the heavy use of caps here, but crap that's a lot of money.
We just switched to Virgin Mobile and bought 2 optimus V's. We were originally going to wait for the Moto Triumph to come out but I wanted to beat the rate increases coming in 2 weeks and also the optimus is a lot less expensive. I went into this telling myself that I needed to be ready for disappointment in the hardware, but I was way off. Here is the break down:
Optimus V cost - $150 x 2 = $300 (not bad considering no contract and no subsidy)
Plans - $25 a month for me
$45 a month for wife
$6 a month for dumbphone 3rd line
Total plans with tax - $81
So basically I just spent $300 to save $100 a month from now on - even that would be great but we can also sell our old devices so there is a solid $350 -400 in additional cash in.
Here are the 2 caveats - you need good Virgin (Sprint) coverage where you work live and play. You also need to get out of the VZW ET fees. I did this by arguing that VZW coverage was bad at my house - 2 months ago they sent me a FREE network extender to try and help with this - it didnt as my internet connection has crappy QoS apparently regardless of tweaking. When this did not help I told them I was leaving but did not mention it was for monetary savings. Bonus - I now have a network extender for VZW to sell as well - additional $150 cash in.
The point of this thread was to share with all of you that have helped me so much in the past here. The optimus V is a great device. I was very concerned at the paltry 600mhz processor but it flies - mostly thanks to the separate graphics processor. I would also note that the internal program storage on the Optimus is sorely lacking, but I just Apps2SD everything and I am doing fine. The main trade off that I feel during use is not speed, but screen size and screen quality (oh how I love thee AMOLED) - but that is just not worth $100 a month to me.
I also happen to own an Asus transformer so when I want some hardcore mobile gaming or big screen goodness I use it - heck even if I did not own one already I could buy one in 4 months just with the savings from VZW. Optimus stealth tethers like a champ - so no additional charge there for tablet interent either.
One more suggestion - I got a burner phone from Virgin that I carried and used for a week to check network coverage - it was actually better than VZW in quite a few places that I frequent but YMMV.
I am very happy with my decision, but will miss tinkering with the Fascinate. Thanks again for all the help and maybe I will see some of the more frugal of you in the Optimus forum. I will probably still peek in here from time to time anyway.
One more little thing to mention - Netflix works on the Optimus - lol
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