What type of cell phone/plan do you have (if any)?

[Heretic_Cata]

Am i the only one shocked by how much people are actually paying per month ?? The biggest fee per month that i've heard a friend use was a 20 euro/month fee for one of those fancy Galaxy tab thingies for practically unlimited minutes per month in any network, practically unlimited SMS, practically unlimited internet on it. The only thing not unlimited on it are the minutes for out of country calls.

 

[Grisu]

Am i the only one shocked by how much people are actually paying per month ?? The biggest fee per month that i've heard a friend use was a 20 euro/month fee for one of those fancy Galaxy tab thingies for practically unlimited minutes per month in any network, practically unlimited SMS, practically unlimited internet on it. The only thing not unlimited on it are the minutes for out of country calls.

Switzerland's an expensive place to be my 50.-- plan doesn't even include data transmission, surfing the web would be insanely expensive with my plan)

 

[Maniacal]

What the heck is 50.-- and how much is that in Canadian dollars?

 

[azzaman333]

Am i the only one shocked by how much people are actually paying per month ?? The biggest fee per month that i've heard a friend use was a 20 euro/month fee for one of those fancy Galaxy tab thingies for practically unlimited minutes per month in any network, practically unlimited SMS, practically unlimited internet on it. The only thing not unlimited on it are the minutes for out of country calls.

You have to pay ~$50 AU per month just for unlimited SMS here, as far as I'm aware. I wouldn't really know though, since I don't use my phone anywhere near enough for that to be a concern.

 

[Grisu]

What the heck is 50.-- and how much is that in Canadian dollars?

sorry, forgot the currency. it's CHF 50.-- and that translates roughly to CAD 55.--, USD 56.-- or EUR 40.--

 

[Mise]

Yep, I do a lot of that. I turn off 4G and wifi but keep GPS on because I use maps a lot. My screen brightness dims after 3 seconds automatically and shuts off every 10-15 seconds (can't remember) so I do try to squeeze as much as I can. All my relevant settings widgets are on the last page when I skip left. I don't mess with task killers and I probably should. I suspect no matter what I did, however, it would still perform poorly compared to other phones for battery life because it's an EVO. What type of phone do you have?

HTC Hero. Nearly 2 years old now... I'm pretty desperate to replace it, but I'm running up against the age old problem of there always being an even newer sparkly thing just a few months away...

Yeah, task killers can be a bit too... aggressive sometimes. If you ever do use one, make sure to exclude the important tasks, like messages and the alarm, which should always be on. (Usually they'll exclude system tasks automatically though.) Other than that I just hit the "kill all" button when I know I'm not going to be using anything for a while (or kill specific tasks if I know I'm not going to be using that program again). The kernel recognises that there is low CPU load and underclocks it, which saves battery.


@Zelig: For something that costs 30% more that's the least I'd expect

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Or, more relevantly, I should say a hell of a lot less than my pack a day of camels.


Anyhoo, I have a Blackberry Style flip with Sprint. 400 min/mo with unlimited data, text, web. $79/mo.

Ever since my Step Father made me smoke a pack straight up , then rolled the left overs into more with papers after he caught me smoking , I haven't been able to tolerate them (Camels , not smokes that is. Unfortunately I didn't learn my lesson)

 

[LucyDuke]

Am i the only one shocked by how much people are actually paying per month ??

Nope. I'm actually surprised by how little some people manage to pay, even though I knew they had it better than me. I'm paying way too much and it's stupid.

 

[Zelig]

Am i the only one shocked by how much people are actually paying per month ?? The biggest fee per month that i've heard a friend use was a 20 euro/month fee for one of those fancy Galaxy tab thingies for practically unlimited minutes per month in any network, practically unlimited SMS, practically unlimited internet on it. The only thing not unlimited on it are the minutes for out of country calls.

That's just not going to happen in North America - I ran some quick numbers, and the big carriers would be losing money if they charged less than $30/month on average.

What the heck is 50.-- and how much is that in Canadian dollars?

Doesn't really matter, for tech stuff vs income, USD, CAD and all the Euro currencies are more or less comparable 1:1.

You have to pay ~$50 AU per month just for unlimited SMS here, as far as I'm aware. I wouldn't really know though, since I don't use my phone anywhere near enough for that to be a concern.

Yeah, that can't be right, Canada has high prices, and you can get SMS here for:

"$5.75/month for 250 Outgoing Messages + Unlimited Incoming messages (Pay & Talk). $5+ for 2500 and $5+ for unlimited."

Yeah, task killers can be a bit too... aggressive sometimes. If you ever do use one, make sure to exclude the important tasks, like messages and the alarm, which should always be on. (Usually they'll exclude system tasks automatically though.) Other than that I just hit the "kill all" button when I know I'm not going to be using anything for a while (or kill specific tasks if I know I'm not going to be using that program again). The kernel recognises that there is low CPU load and underclocks it, which saves battery.

Task killers are overrated, unless you're using extremely amateurish apps, "background" apps that you can't close in Android use pretty negligible cpu. I'm not going to bother expanding on the technical reasons for this, if anyone is interested, Google helps.

@Zelig: For something that costs 30% more that's the least I'd expect

I would gladly pay 30% more for an HD7 with iphone4 battery life.

My deal-breakers for the iphone are Apple's setup, Apple's stupid PC-iphone interfacing, and the lack of an AWS version, I really don't see a problem with the hardware/software quality/price.

 

[Mise]

Task killers are overrated, unless you're using extremely amateurish apps, "background" apps that you can't close in Android use pretty negligible cpu. I'm not going to bother expanding on the technical reasons for this, if anyone is interested, Google helps.

Oh, I've read those articles too, and I agree that they are overrated, insofar as they won't improve system speed and responsivity if you're constantly killing apps that you use frequently. I just find that, in practice, killing the tasks that I'm not using or likely to use does extend battery life. I don't really care what the theory is - in practice, that's how it's worked out. Call it a placebo if you want, but I've used this thing for nearly 2 years now and there are things you just learn from doing.

And there are plenty of apps that are poorly written and load services that take up a lot of CPU cycles in the background... Even ones written by supposedly big companies, and especially on pre-2.2 devices that lack push notifications (or apps that don't utilise them, but poll instead). Some developers are just lazy and stupid. Some apps are just poorly optimised. Some apps re-invent the wheel, instead of using Android's well-optimised APIs. Some apps were written for or tested on devices with more RAM or more CPU, and so are less parsimonious than they could have been. Yeah, obvious solution, get rid of those apps... But even if you did spend a few days of trial and error, narrowing down the list of potentially poorly written apps to a few culprits, there's no guarantee that you can find a suitable replacement for them. Maybe you can stand putting up with task-killing them after you use them, rather than face the daunting prospect of using a less well-featured alternative. The point is, I don't see what's wrong with using a task killer to kill a few naughty apps, or why so many pundits are so dogmatic about task killers. There are scenarios in which they improve performance, even if the frequency of those scenarios is (obviously) overstated by the makers of the task killer apps. The corrollary is that the frequency of those scenarios is understated by Android's developers, and by every single app-maker out there. Nobody's going to admit that their app loads inefficient background services, or that their OS can't handle task management without help from a third-party app.

Anyway, /rant.

 

[SuperJay]

HTC Incredible smartphone with Android OS, v.??.?.?

It's pretty nice, but yeah, paying too much for my data plan.

 

[Maniacal]

sorry, forgot the currency. it's CHF 50.-- and that translates roughly to CAD 55.--, USD 56.-- or EUR 40.--

Good to know but mostly I am wondering why the hell you keep using

.--

after every number.

 

[illram]

Regarding buggy apps, has anyone else had consistent issues with the NY Times app? Iphone, android, whatever, the app is consistently buggy and prone to crashes and hangs. I would think a world class newspaper could make a decent app but apparently not. BBC for the win!

 

[Narz]

After reading this thread I've come to believe there's not really much better for my needs than what I already have so I purchased 3,000 (or 10,000 texts) minutes on my Tracfone for a little over $200 which should do me for at least six months.

 

[Zelig]

After reading this thread I've come to believe there's not really much better for my needs than what I already have so I purchased 3,000 (or 10,000 texts) minutes on my Tracfone for a little over $200 which should do me for at least six months.

Did you miss my plan? For $210 over 6 months, I get unlimited minutes to anywhere in North America, unlimited texts, unlimited data.

But you'd need to be Canadian.

 

[Narz]

After nearly 5 years with a Tracfone I finally bit the bullet & got a fancy one.

I have to admit, I love it. Samsung Galaxy Note 4, got it at Costco. Cost waaaay too much (I think $700) but its huge & basically like a mini laptop that can make phone calls, is a GPS, etc. I pay off $20something a month until its paid off & I get unlimited text/calls & data (1GB high speed per month I think) which costs $50 a month.

I also finally tried Pandora & I do like it.

I feel like with this little toy I never have an excuse to get bored ever.

I doubt I will start posting on CFC with this phone though, mostly I use it for music/videos besides txt & calls of course. The GPS feature comes in handy, I can put headphones on, the phone in my pocket & ride my bike & it just tells me where to turn, very relaxing. If I had enough supplies I feel like I could ride all the way to Florida like this.

 

[madviking]

I got a Moto X a few weeks ago.

 

[LucyDuke]

After nearly 5 years with a Tracfone I finally bit the bullet & got a fancy one.

I have to admit, I love it. Samsung Galaxy Note 4, got it at Costco. Cost waaaay too much (I think $700) but its huge & basically like a mini laptop that can make phone calls, is a GPS, etc. I pay off $20something a month until its paid off & I get unlimited text/calls & data (1GB high speed per month I think).

It's a delicious bullet.

And it is a bullet.

 

[Zelig]

Man, the mobile landscaped has changed over the past four years.

It's real hard to justify $700 Android phones when you can get a OnePlus One for $300 or a Moto X for $360.

 

[sophie]

I got a Moto X a few weeks ago.

did you tho?