Smartphones

I went with a 16GB N4, as 8GB is just too little storage for me. Otherwise, it's a fantastic phone with lots of developer support for those interested in custom roms.

As far as Sprint goes, I had been a Sprint customer for over 10 years before I left them in Feb. I had checked my contract status online before ordering my N4 and it said my line (it was part of a family plan my dad had) was out of contract. I got the N4, signed up for Straight Talk and ported my number over with no issues. The next month my dad gets a bill with a $300 ETF added to it and is justifiably pissed off. After a long call to Sprint they offer up a compromise: give back my old phone number and they'll drop the ETF, because my line was actually in contract until 2014 and the information online was wrong. I figure holding on to my number isn't worth $300, so I suck it up and transfer it back to Sprint and get a new one from Straight Talk. Predictably, the $300 ETF returns the next month along with the regular charges for my old phone, which isn't being used. Another call to Sprint gets the ETF removed, but the CS manager says my dad now has to pay for the line for 3 months or the ETF will return. My dad threatens to cancel the entire plan at this point so he can get to the customer retention people, but they won't budge. In fact they say the previous CS reps were wrong and that he will have to carry my old line until my contract runs out or pay the ETF. The only positive thing they did was finally drop the insurance from the other lines that my dad has been telling them to cancel for months.

So at this point, Sprint has guaranteed that my dad will drop them as soon as the other lines are out of contract. For years he has refused to drop Sprint even though their network is lousy in upstate NY because he likes their CS people, but he has finally had enough. I just need to find some reasonably priced, unlocked phones from him and my mom to use when the they do drop Sprint. Unfortunately the N4 costs more than they would like to spend.

Also, for the few people who haven't heard about it, the NSA is getting the metadata for all calls involving Verizon customers:http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...records-daily/

Famm_sl said:

So is that Straight Talk company my best bet if I were to drop Verizon and go with the Nexus 4 route? The whole $45/month thing sounds fucking nice.

Coverage map shows solid for my area, but is that good connection? Strong streaming for music?

Click to expand...

As wolfen posted, the T-Mobile plan might be better if you don't talk much, as Straight Talk only sells T-Mobile sims now. I got an AT&T sim before they stopped selling them, since T-Mobile is terrible where I live. I've had no complaints with them and the only thing you pay beyond the plan price is local sales tax. If you sign up for automatic payments every 30 days they knock $2.50 off the price.