Selfie with Lucy taken with my new Galaxy S4!
I just received a brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 phone from Cricket in the mail! I agreed to try out Cricket’s service and the Galaxy S4 phone and share my thoughts on BargainBabe.com. I’ve been dismayed by how much our monthly Verizon phone bill has been. We pay – for one smartphone and one simple phone – almost $160 each month! I polled readers on our Facebook page and found a huge number of folks pay less than $50 each month for their cell phone!
Here’s what I’m looking for in my new Galaxy S4 smartphone.
- Service – we don’t have a landline so NOT dropping calls is important. We’ve all been there. It’s just too annoying to drop calls regularly when we don’t have a landline as a backup. Today I dropped one call in town while driving around. That happens only very occasionally with Verizon, so I’ll need to watch out for that.
- Cost – Cricket is a lot like Boost Mobile or Metro PCS in that you have a flat fee every month with a lot of unlimiteds! The plan we have has unlimited talk, and text, and three pricing options tied to how much data we want to use. (The $50 plan also lacks 411 assistance.) The plans are $50 for 2.5 GB, $60 for 5GB, and $70 for 10GB. I tried to log into Verizon to see how much data I’ve been using, and they make it VERY hard to figure it out. I basically have to export all the daily data usage to Excel, then sum it myself. Thanks for making my life easy, Verizon. NOT! Wait, I just figured it out. On the My Bill page –> Charges by line, I can see how much data I’ve used in each cycle going back 18 months. I’ve never used more than .9GB of data, so the $50 plan for 2.5GB would be more than sufficient.
- Ease of use – I’ve had an iPhone for five years now and I still remember my first iPhone bill for $1,200! My favorite thing about the iPhone was that I didn’t have to read the user’s manual! It was so intuitive. So far, the Galaxy S4 seems to be very easy to use. I’m still getting to know it and want to test out how easy I can blog and email from the phone. Essentials!
- Camera quality – I take a lot of pictures and videos of my two little girls to send to family and friends. I also print out many of the photos I take with my phone, so I want the camera to be sharp. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a 13.0 MP camera and you can flip it around to take pics of your self with a 2MP camera. This is a big difference, but I take most of my photos with the 13MP lens.
How much do you pay for your cell phone?
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
Hi Julia 🙂 I am a single Mom and on a very tight budget. We use the Family Plan from TMobile $40 for the first phone & $35 for the second phone – Unlimited everything also. The only downfall is you have to buy your phone outright. From time to time I lose a call which is frustrating but, that happened even when I had Verizon. I was paying $135 per month for service for my son & I on Verizon where only I had the smart phone. Now we both do & I only pay $75 per mo 🙂
@Tina That’s usually the tradeoff for a low monthly unlimited plan – you have to pay full price for the phone. Assuming the phone doesn’t break for at least two years, the low-monthly cost plans are usually cheaper. But if anything happens to your phone, it’ll end up costing a lot more to replace it (you could always buy a super cheap simple phone.)
SO far I’m really liking the Galaxy. It’s a lot different than the ipHone, but I just can’t stomach the cost of Verizon anymore. Everytime I check with the cost options of various parts of our service, the rates have gone up. They used to have a plan for $5 a month for 200 texts, but it is no longer available. The data plans are increasing, and even the family plan saves a little money but removes the unlimited data element. And once you switch, you can’t get it back. I’m tired of paying out the nose of a phone!
We have been with AT&T for 10 years and love them. I was paying close to $280/month for 4 smart phones, pooling 10 gb of data & a mifi hotspot box for when I’m out of town (but the Samsung galaxy can also turn into a hotspot to run a computer and tablet if you weren’t aware of that. I don’t think that the iPhone does that). AT&T has a new plan that actually cut me down to $180/month. I believe it’s $160 if you don’t have a mifi. I also save 15% on my bill bc my daughter goes to Coastal Croline University. AT&T has LOTS of businesses, schools, organizations that get discounts on their bill. I have a $14.99/month plan That lets me locate my 2 daughters & my husband. It pulls up their gps spot on google earth. I have one daughter 2 states away and one that travels from VA to MD to see her boyfriend every Weekend so to me its worth it! I’ve never had my bill this low and I’m SUPER excited. Here’s the link if you want to check out more on AT&T plans. You can also go on their website at ATTwireless.com and start a checkout that you can always cancel before you submit. I also read that you’ll get a $400 credit on your first bill if you have 4 smartphones. $100/phone. Most smartphones can be ported over to a new carrie nowadays so they could be used with AT&T if you didn’t want to buy a new phone. Hope that helps.
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=25237&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=37411&mapcode=
@Heather Thanks so much for this detailed info about how you save money on your cell phone plan! We will check out AT&T. Right now we pay about $140-$165 a month for Verizon (one smartphone and one simple phone). My husband wants to get a smartphone when we pick a new carrier. We won’t qualify for the 4 phone discount, but there may be a shared plan for minutes and text and data (right now our Verizon plan only lets us share minutes) that saves us a few bucks.