Stupidphone

[howeird]

Am looking for a better smartphone and maybe a better service provider. Motorola Bionic on Verizon has done the following:
1. Turned itself off
2. Locked up. Needed to remove/re-install the battery to recover
3. Powered itself back on as soon as it was powered off
4. Put calls through to voicemail with no record that a call was received, usually when there was a good signal
5. Lost 4G signal and needed a reboot to find it again. This goes hand in hand with:
6. Not stepping down to 3G on loss of 4G

It also takes > 2 minutes to boot up. And I need the extended battery for 8 hours of service.

#3 has been a problem with Verizon and AT&T regardless of the phone (both HTC and Motorola Android & iPhone 3G)

I mostly use the device as a pocket PC, and rarely get texts or phone calls - but when I do they are important and time-sensitive.

Your thoughts, please?

Comments

[susandennis]

I've always been a Sprint customer - except for one brief foray into Trackfone (thumbs down)and Virgin Mobile (thumbs up).

Sprint has pissed me off once in a while but never badly enough to seriously consider switching. Several months ago, I got it into my head that Sprint was over charging me so I did some comparison shopping. For what I want, Sprint was the cheapest. So that ended that.

I have two phones and two phone numbers. I have an Epic 4G which I am not fond of and don't use much (it's my backup). I have an EVO 4G (which isn't offered any more) that I love. The Epic is on a contract that expires in April and so on April 1 of this year, I can get $150 towards a new phone (if I re-up for 2 years). Just today I was on the site to see what they had available for phones and yuck. None look even moderately interesting to me.

If I had to buy a new phone today, I'd go to eBay and buy another EVO 4G. But, it does take for.freakin.ever to boot up. Before the last couple of updates it used to freeze up fairly frequently with the only resolution being to take out and put back the battery. But, it hasn't done that in a long time now.

But, I digress.... I use the device pretty much like you do except, I also use it as a wifi hotspot quite a bit and really need it as a backup modem.

Oh also with Sprint, you can assign your number to Google Voice and get texts and voicemail through the Google Voice webpage plus get some of the features of Google Voice which I find quite handy.

I'll open up the floor for any questions at this point :)

[howeird]

Thanks, lots of good stuff there. I had not considered Sprint before because of their annoying push-to-talk campaign, but that seems to have gone away. I'll have to ask them if they can provision an EVO 4G down here. eBay is a great idea, I've sold a couple of old phones there but never thought of buying one. At least not lately.

[susandennis]

If you do go to Sprint, you might get a better deal by doing a 2 year contract on one of their free phones. Then swap out the free phone for the EVO 4G (they will add $10 to your plan for 4g-ness whether you get 4g in your area or not).

I was shocked, when I swapped out my broken EVO for a used one that they let me get insurance on the used one. I think it's like another $7 but worth it, IMO.

They have a couple of newer EVO models (3d and some other one, I think) and they might be worth looking at. I paid $100 for my used EVO, btw.