Pay as you go

I got a new phone on Friday.

I was satisfied with the StarTac, it worked great, was easy to use, the battery lasted a long time, I had no problems with it. Except that it had a line of dead pixels across the display. It wasn't usually a problem, but sometimes when I'd get an incoming call whose caller i.d. stretched across two lines, I couldn't read the second line. And text messages were problematic. Not that I used that feature a lot, but it was annoying to try to use it and not only not be able to read what was being sent to me, but not be able to read what I was sending.

My contract was due to be up the end of the year, so I thought I might as well take a look at what kinds of upgrades they had. I had really thought I'd just get something very similar to what I had, something sort of utilitarian.

I like the flip-phone style--I like being able to close it up and stick it in my pocket and not worry about accidentally pressing a button. I also liked the Motorola "smart button." The StarTac had three buttons on the left-hand side, with the middle one being the menu select button, and the default was to go to the phonebook. So I could open the phone, press the middle button for the phone book, then press it again for Bob--the first entry--and I could do that without having to look at the phone at all, which I liked, particularly when driving.

I did my research, looked at what Cingular (my cell provider) had to offer, looked at all kinds of reviews of the various models, looked at prices, etc. Then I went to the Cingular store on the way home Friday night, and almost walked out without buying anything. Well, I did walk out without buying anything, but I just sat out in the car for a little while and talked to Bob and tried to decide what to do.

They had two Motorola models, both the flip-phone style, one monochrome and one color. One (the monochrome) was TDMA, the regular digital network, as I understand it (don't quote me). It cost $100 after the various rebates and signing a two year contract.

The color one was GSM, a different kind of network that is currently less available across the US, and cost $50 after rebates.

It bothered me to get a phone that might not work in a particular area, but as Bob pointed out, it would have been kind of dumb to spend more money for a phone with less features, and really, how often do I travel anyway, and when I do, it's not like I'm hiking in the mountains or anything, I pretty much stick to major metropolitan areas . . .

So I went back in and bought the color one, the Motorola T720.

Downloadable ringtones. Wallpaper. Changeable color schemes. Wireless internet access, email, voice commands ("Call Bob!"). Yikes. It's just like anything else, once you have something new you can't imagine how you got along with the old one. I had thought about hanging on to the old StarTac, and was worried that I had to mail it in to get the rebate, but not it seems like such a dinosaur I'm sure I'd never want or need to go back to it.

At first I thought I wouldn't get the extra internet package--you can do a "pay as you go" kind of thing, and I thought that made sense, at least until I figured out how much I would be using it. But after playing around with it for awhile, I soon figured out that I don't like the "pay as you go" thing, it makes me worry, like the old internet packages used to for the computer, where you were always worried that you were going to use up your allotted time. I'm certainly not going to buy the "unlimited" package, with is, I think, $75(!)/month, but I'm going to get the $6.99/month, smallest package. That gives me 1MB of downloads, and I think surely that will be enough, especially after the newness of it wears off.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month