Originally Posted by
mtnbud
I also only have a simple pay as you go plan. My phone costs me $20 every 3 months, so $6.33 a month. I was thinking about doing what you're doing and buying a smart phone with GPS, but not activating it. I was wondering if there's any problems with doing this? Does a phone need a sim card for the WiFi to work? How about the GPS? I've toured for over 20 years without using GPS, but the idea of having GPS with downloaded maps is very appealing.
I found a smart phone on Amazon for $99 with free shipping. It says it's got an Android 4.2 operating system. WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, with a MTK 6572 processor . (2G only)
I think you are on the same pay by minute as I am, $20 a month with my vintage phone. I pay $0.25 per minute for first 10 minutes of the day, $0.10 per minute after that. But since I almost never use it, I have a lot of minutes sitting in my account waiting for me.
I got an Android 4.1 smartphone on Ebay that takes SIM cards, I have not bought any SIM cards yet. I only use it on wifi, it does not need a SIM card to work on wifi.
Some of the cheap Android phones do NOT have GPS chip inside. So, be sure that the one you buy has that chip in it. I think the 2G only phones are more likely to NOT have the GPS chip than the 3G phones, so that is something to double check before you buy.
Originally Posted by
wphamilton
On the Google Voice, make sure you have an alternative lined up because it will cease to function as you use it on May 15 when they are disabling the XMPP support (all of the third party stuff). I had a similar setup for my house line - you can't beat totally free - but since that's ending I settled for forwarding my GV number to a Callcentric incoming DID (which is still free) and used Callcentric's pay per call outgoing VOIP which is "almost" free so it's almost the same thing. Callcentric forwards the GV to both my cell number and wifi SIP number, so my phone picks up whichever is available, prioritizing the wifi (or data if I turn that on) if both are available.
I was unaware of this, thanks for the warning. I have some homework to do.