photo credit: velorowdy
I’ve been using my wife’s Samsung Blackjack for several months now and think it’s the best phone we’ve owned for a long time. We actually had better cell phone reception with an older Motorola flip phone, but that was back in the analog days. I have the Samsung Blackjack through At&t and have had several issues with the Edge and 3G network where we live, including dropped calls. My bill last month was $39 for voice and $30 for unlimited data plan.
Recently, I have read that people are frustrated with the connection speed of the new 3G iphones. Some people are peeved that they 3G network suddenly moves over to the Edge network. Well, this was experienced on my Samsung Blackjack, so I don’t know why the iphone would be immune to these issues. In fact, I’m surprised that we even expect the 3G network to be 100% consistent when we still experience dropped calls in our house. I still laugh when I recall my conversations with At&t about my poor reception in my house. I was told to talk near a large window or talk outside. To make sure a phone call is not dropped, I must stand in the middle of our house. Very practical! I would actually like an iphone someday, and if I was given one as a gift with a free wireless plan, I’d use it. For now, I’ll wait until At&t adds more cell towers and beefs up the 3G network in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Should I keep my current data plan at $30 a month? Nope. I thought I could justify the $30 data plan through email communications and even checking The Passive Dad occasionally. Well, not a good use of our money as I never used the data plan that much. It kind of became the equivalent of a gym membership, good idea, but rarely used. I plan on moving the $30 over to our emergency savings account at ING or split the difference and apply $15 each to our children’s 529 account.
