Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton here, loving Chicago's gorgeous weather yesterday, freezing right now. Cest le vie. Anyway, I've been doing a lot of thinking about cell phones lately because due to some billing issues, I've had to leave US Cellular whom I still feel is a great cell company. I'm now with Boost Mobile but I can't say for how long. Cellphones are now more of a requirement than a want for most people, especially us tech saavy people. With that in mind, one must choose wisely when deciding which phone to get, what cell company to get yours from, etc. Here's the 4 biggest mistakes I've had to deal with.
4) Smartphones aren't for everybody:
Life becomes so much more easier when you become Internet saavy, trust me. Paying bills online, shopping, staying post on the latest news, etc are all so much more easier & faster online. Using that logic, life became easier after the arrival of the laptop and easier still with the arrival of the smart cell phone. BUT just because it can make your life easy doesn't mean you absolutely need one. Sometimes the basic, "ancient" phone is exaactly what you need. I got 2 buddies who prove my point exactly. My boy Antione has a flip phone and he loves it! Facebooks, texts, calls, browses the web, he does almost everything with a basic phone that's possible, just a tad bit slower. I tease him a lot bout his dinosaur but its all good if it does the job and it does for him, I guess. Our guy Nard has an Android that besides using bus tracker, texting, & making calls, he never uses it. Antoine does more for less with his phone while Nard is paying for additional cellphone features that he won't ever benefit from enough to justify. The thing most people don't know is that most cell companies charge an additional fee for data plans specfor smart phones. Even Boost's 'only $50 a month' plan adds $5 for smartphones. If your not gonna use it, why get it?
3) Everybody CANNOT use your smartphone:
If you are using a smartphone, you know as well as I do it's not really a smartphone; it's a slightly dumb computer that makes phonecalls. It does the same thing a computer can do. That means it has the same strengths as a CPU and the same weaknesses. One of the worst of the weaknesses: viruses. I remember getting my first Android phone. The first problem I encountered was a virus. I couldn't figure out where it came from at first but then one of my guys asked to borrow my phone after I had it cleaned & I just happened to glance at my screen in time to notice this fool was looking up porn! Porn lovers & illegal downloaders get CPU viruses quicker than anybody else for some strange reason (I think Christian programmers are some of the virus makers because of this). Plus, with all these banking apps, social sites, etc, why would you freely give up your phone to people? Bottom line: If they ain't using your phone to make a phonecall, and it better be quick phone call at that, they need to get there own phone.
2) Signing up for text? Watch those fine prints:
Know why I had to leave US Cellular? Well, there's a number of reasons but they all started when I added my wife Leiatonia & one of my stepsons Navarris to my plan. Actually my plan, which was $69 unlimited everything a month plus charges that came out to bout $95-120 after taxes, was eliminated and I started a family plan. The family plan was supposed to make my bill lower. I would be paying about $225 or $75 per line vs the $95 I was paying for myself. The first bill came and it was that $225, plus taxes of course, and "other" charges, totaling $350 more than what I was expecting or willing to pay. The other charges turned out to be from numerous updates like NBA & MLB that Navarris' phone had been subscribed to, each at a charge of $10 a pop. He responsed that it wasn't him & it might've been one of his friends who he let see the phone who did it. I'm telling you to watch what you to pay attention to what you subscribe to but you see what I mean about letting people use your phone? Whatever the case, it was a costly lesson indeed.
1) But It Said Unlimited: Apparently, unlimited data plans are slightly inaccurate. By unlimited, most companies mean you'll have access to about 4 gigabytes or more pf data. That's enough for most people to browse the web, send texts, etc, for a month & still have some data left over out of the 4 GBs. But if you're a streamer, a downloader, or a pirate (you know who you are), that 4GBs could be gone in a day. At US Cellular, my service on my Galaxy Tab was interrupted because of this. Of course, US Cellular doesn't offer unlimited data on tabs but they have it on their phones and a few times, my phone was shut down because of an "abuse of data". How can I abuse data if I have an unlimited data plan?
That's it for now, WORLD.
