My latest quandary is:
Make a phone superior to the Thunderbolt but keep the retail price below $400 because it will definitely be cheaper for me to keep Unlimited Data than to pay $149 to Verizon for the phone and be forced into 2 years of capped/tiered data.
I work 12 hour shifts and use my phone to update Podcasts and Vodcasts as I go and also stream Netflix, HBO-Go and just recently Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. These HD streams suck bandwidth like crazy! Over 1 GB to watch the hockey game Wednesday night and I turned it off between periods.
I've posted about this before. All this BS about putting everything in the CLOUD and HD Streaming is great but if you lose "unlimited data" you are going to get murdered on bandwidth overage charges.
No matter how much I try to spread it out (I use Llama app to auto-connect me to Trusted Wi-Fi the second I come into range so I don't even have to think about it), I still average 9-15gb per month LTE usage and another 5-7gb over Wi-Fi.
I don't own a tablet and on RARE occasions I use PDANet to connect the phone to a laptop. My usage is strictly phone-based data.
Simple arithmetic, not even math. To keep paying $30/month for unlimited data times 24 months equals $720.
To pay $80/month for 10GB which I actually may go over periodically times 24 months equals $1,920
Now $1,920 minus $720 equals $1,200 which means I could pay $600 retail for a new phone with unlimited data every year and still break even and without the fear of any charges for going over the 10GB limit.
All this means to ME PERSONALLY right now is that as long as I can keep paying the same rate for UNLIMITED DATA at the grandfathered rate I just have to make sure I have enough dough-in-pocket to BUY at retail the next phone I want and I still SAVE A LOT OF MONEY!
Cheap phones to get locked into a long-term, tiered data plan is NOT a good deal! BUY the frigging phone!
Oh yeah, not to mention, a little bit of rebate you can get by selling last year's phone to someone who would be thrilled to get it for $100 bucks or so cash. There's your discount.