Smartphones

Android must've done some power consumption tweaks that I didn't see DL, because I've noticed about a twofold increase in battery life if not better on the M8 recently too - used to have a light use day (barely using the phone these days) use at least 20-30% by the end of the day, when I plugged it in last night after a long day out - including using it for GPS w/o plugging it in for 20-30 min and plenty of internet usage on 4G doing some lookups/price compares I plugged it in last night with 89% battery still.

Was still pretty light use, but even not touching it I'd expect to use that much battery in 10-12 hrs before.

Are you guys that are noticing the battery life change on 5.0/Lollipop?

man i'm out of the phone game, just noticed i'm up for a new phone via sprint. didnt realize i've had my htc one for 2 years. any models i should look into other than the new htc one, galaxy S and Nexus? anything due out in the next month or 2 that is worth waiting for?

fris_sl said:

man i'm out of the phone game, just noticed i'm up for a new phone via sprint. didnt realize i've had my htc one for 2 years. any models i should look into other than the new htc one, galaxy S and Nexus? anything due out in the next month or 2 that is worth waiting for?

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Kind of mid cycle now. I'd wait till the new announcements come in to decide. I'm trying to get away from Sprint personally.

joeboo_sl said:

Are you guys that are noticing the battery life change on 5.0/Lollipop?

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Coming from a super tweaked 4.4 it's similar. Likely has much more room under the hood though for tweaks.

fris_sl said:

man i'm out of the phone game, just noticed i'm up for a new phone via sprint. didnt realize i've had my htc one for 2 years. any models i should look into other than the new htc one, galaxy S and Nexus? anything due out in the next month or 2 that is worth waiting for?

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Just FYI, the Samsung Galaxy S5 just dropped from $250 to $200, and still has a $50 mail in rebate until the end of December. It's had the rebate for a while, but for some reason the permanent $50 price drop on the price happened about 10 days before the rebate expired. Snagged one for my wife yesterday.

That being said, the S6 should be out around April, but I'm sure it'll be $250 just like the S5 was at release on Sprint.

Sprint jacking up their subsidized phone prices by $50 over all the other carriers is starting to piss me off. I had to pay $350 instead of $300 everywhere else for my Note 3 right at release. Sprint really gigs you on new release phones.

Fucking hell, $200? My local Walmart has them for $79 and they're giving out $75 gift cards with them.

yeah, my htc one is still rocking so i might hold out till next round. my wife isn't due for 3 months, so gonna use my upgrade for her and use her's in 3 months. also have my mom-in-law on the account so we have a regular cycle of available upgrades. debating getting the nexus 9 as a toy to hold me over

DoctorSpooge_sl said:

Fucking hell, $200? My local Walmart has them for $79 and they're giving out $75 gift cards with them.

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That's probably a deal for starting service with a new company, I would assume? Existing customers always get the shaft, compared to new customers.

Nope - I'm actually working as a phone rep there while I work my way through college (again). Gift card promo ends Xmas eve, I think. Valid for ATT, VZW, USCell. Probably more, but those are the only three contract carriers at the local store.

I don't understand why more people don't go to Walmart or Target for their activations/upgrades - the prices (excepting iPhones, of which Apple largely dictates the price) are way, way, way lower. You'll have to deal with idiotic employees of a shitty company, to be sure, but whatever.

They're not refurbed or anything, either. I think the price disparity can be attributed almost solely to the fact that they don't give their reps any fucking commission at all.

Last cell phone question. Sorry I know nothing about them at all since I had the same phone provider for almost 15 years and only 2 phones in that time.

I have an AT&T samsung infuse I got from them. I no longer have AT&T, or any other provider. I assume I can go into AT&T and get the cheapest, crappiest smartphone and contract and take the sim out and use it in my infuse on that contract? In the downtime I used a AT&T go phone I bought for $14 and just took that same sim card out and put it in the infuse and it worked and just used it as prepaid while I decided what I was going to do.

Make sense?

I think you might run into the issue that the cheapest, crappiest smartphone (contract) is now going to be 4g and thus use a micro SIM. Smaller SIM, physically. They can probably just upgrade you without using a new SIM, though. But why go under contract if you intend to use a phone you already have? Pretty sure you can just activate a prepaid phone, discard that phone, and put the prepaid SIM in your Infuse.

Edit: If the Infuse uses a microSim, then disregard the first part of that statement. I still don't know why you'd go under contract if you're going to use a 4 year old (I think?) phone. The primary perk is a massively subsidized $700 dollar phone every few years. If you're not gonna capitalize on that, just go prepaid.

Edit edit: Regardless, unless you've got some sentimental attachment to your phone you should be able to get a superior one pretty much for free if you go under contract.

Deathwing_sl said:

Stick with the prepaid gophone plan, it's what I do. $54/month, no taxes or fees, is pretty nice. You can go even cheaper if you're a miser with your data package.

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That's what I do now, sorry if that wasn't clear. I just hate having to reload it. I almost NEVER talk on my personal phone. I run out of time, either the 30 days or 90 days depending on what denomination I get before I run out of minutes. IE my 30 days or 90 days expire before the minutes I have to use in that time frame.

I would rather just have a bill each month and take care of it. I can't imagine a bill of voice and text with very minimum data usage is very expensive.

Sounds like the other option is just get another/new phone under contract.

Yes I know. I'm not like 99.9% of cell phone users. I have a work phone but I keep a personal one as well.

I would be all in for a new phone if I could find one smaller than the infuse which is the biggest drawback I had on it.

I would go back to an old fashioned flip phone or kept my old one if people didnt' send me pics that are work related on my personal phone because they can't seem to figure out work phones are for work crap and personal phones are for personal phones.

Consider the Iphone 5C for freeness and smallness if you go back under contract. If you stick with what you have now, you should be able to call customer service and enroll in some sort of autopay. You won't get a bill -- just an automatic deduction at each pay period.

Deathwing_sl said:

Stick with the prepaid gophone plan, it's what I do. $54/month, no taxes or fees, is pretty nice. You can go even cheaper if you're a miser with your data package.

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Who is this through? I'm honestly thinking about dropping Verizon. I pay like $120 a month including my Edge and I'm a little tired of that.

DoctorSpooge_sl said:

Consider the Iphone 5C for freeness and smallness if you go back under contract. If you stick with what you have now, you should be able to call customer service and enroll in some sort of autopay. You won't get a bill -- just an automatic deduction at each pay period.

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I don't mind a bill. I just mind refilling the time on the phone when it expires. Smallness right now is what I'm most looking for, but it has to be AT&T.

I have been provided a sat phone for the last 3 years but that deal expires at the first of the year due to leaving that job. I think I talked 2 minutes on it in that time.

I'm not much of a phone person.

Gophone is At&T's prepaid service. Verizon has one as well - i think it's $50/ month with unlimited talk, text and like half a gig of web I think.

We had our christmas yesterday. I made the mistake of asking my niece about her phone and got a 20 minute talk about how great it was because it required an invite to get.