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My experience with prepaid phones is that they're cheaply made (as you'd expect for a phone you can buy for $10). I used prepaid between 2001 and 2008 (and am

My experience with prepaid phones is that they're cheaply made (as you'd expect for a phone you can buy for $10). I used prepaid between 2001 and 2008 (and am still on a month-to-month plan), but most of the phones were crap. Volume doesn't go up far enough, or the screen has dead pixels, or the keypad stops working unless you push really hard on the numbers, or it can only hold 20 contact numbers, or the battery lasts only half the day after a few months of use (when it started, I could charge it only once a week, but...). On the plus side, if I had these problems with my current smartphone, I'd get it fixed, whereas with those, I just threw them away and got a new phone.

cdr 16y ago
I've used T-Mobile prepaid for years and converted dozens of people to it. You can use any (compatible) phone you want with it, just insert SIM. The minutes never expire as long as you buy minutes at least once a year, which will cost you as little as $5. I spend around $100 on my phone service per year, total. Unfortunately AFAIK, you just plain can't get data plans with prepaid, from anyone. So prepaid doesn't work very well with smartphones. Also, T-Mobile coverage leaves a lot to be desired compared to other networks.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  T-Mobile is actually really great in this regard (I also use them, now), since once you need a data plan, you can just use their month-to-month plans without a contract. My month-to-month is ~$90, for unlimited voice/text/3G-data. But my impression remains that if you buy a "prepaid phone", it will probably be very low quality.
ugh 16y ago
What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use? I bought a nice unlocked Nokia 6300 (now in its third year of production but quite small, built like a tank and even good looking – works great for phone calls and the occasional text message) for 100 Euro and just use my free prepaid SIM with it. That’s perfect for me. I hardly ever make calls but it’s still nice to have a phone number where others can reach you and since my university has great free WiFi, spending all that money on some 3G plan would be a real waste. I can nearly always just use my iPod touch.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use? In theory, nothing, but for those concerned about comitting to spending more than $5-10 a month on phone service (that is, the prepaid target market), spending $100-150 for a phone seems unlikely. And, in fact, I bought $10-15 phones repeatedly, about one a year on average, for the ~7 years I used prepaid-only. That was mostly with Virgin Mobile, though, which has no SIM, being a CDMA network.
  - ugh 16y ago
    I used my last 100 Euro phone (my trusty old Sony Ericcson T630) for more than three years. That’s about 2.5 Euro per month. You get a solid phone that doesn’t look stupid and that seems totally worth it (those phones are also not locked which means you can change prepaid providers at a moments notice).
  - alextgordon 16y ago
    It's not quite that simple. You've got to consider the price of the phone on and off the contract, the price of the contract, monthly usage, prepaid value, expected life of the phone, etc. I bought my £100 phone 2 years ago with £10 credit. Still got about £4 remaining on it (clearly I don't make a lot of calls). If I'd bought it on a contract I would be down double or triple what I paid.

cdr 16y ago

I've used T-Mobile prepaid for years and converted dozens of people to it. You can use any (compatible) phone you want with it, just insert SIM. The minutes never expire as long as you buy minutes at least once a year, which will cost you as little as $5. I spend around $100 on my phone service per year, total. Unfortunately AFAIK, you just plain can't get data plans with prepaid, from anyone. So prepaid doesn't work very well with smartphones. Also, T-Mobile coverage leaves a lot to be desired compared to other networks.

randallsquared 16y ago
T-Mobile is actually really great in this regard (I also use them, now), since once you need a data plan, you can just use their month-to-month plans without a contract. My month-to-month is ~$90, for unlimited voice/text/3G-data. But my impression remains that if you buy a "prepaid phone", it will probably be very low quality.

ugh 16y ago

What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use? I bought a nice unlocked Nokia 6300 (now in its third year of production but quite small, built like a tank and even good looking – works great for phone calls and the occasional text message) for 100 Euro and just use my free prepaid SIM with it. That’s perfect for me. I hardly ever make calls but it’s still nice to have a phone number where others can reach you and since my university has great free WiFi, spending all that money on some 3G plan would be a real waste. I can nearly always just use my iPod touch.

randallsquared 16y ago
What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use? In theory, nothing, but for those concerned about comitting to spending more than $5-10 a month on phone service (that is, the prepaid target market), spending $100-150 for a phone seems unlikely. And, in fact, I bought $10-15 phones repeatedly, about one a year on average, for the ~7 years I used prepaid-only. That was mostly with Virgin Mobile, though, which has no SIM, being a CDMA network.
- ugh 16y ago
  I used my last 100 Euro phone (my trusty old Sony Ericcson T630) for more than three years. That’s about 2.5 Euro per month. You get a solid phone that doesn’t look stupid and that seems totally worth it (those phones are also not locked which means you can change prepaid providers at a moments notice).
- alextgordon 16y ago
  It's not quite that simple. You've got to consider the price of the phone on and off the contract, the price of the contract, monthly usage, prepaid value, expected life of the phone, etc. I bought my £100 phone 2 years ago with £10 credit. Still got about £4 remaining on it (clearly I don't make a lot of calls). If I'd bought it on a contract I would be down double or triple what I paid.