I need a cell phone - and advice

[diceisgod]

I hate fucking cell phones, but my new job has pretty much made it a necessary evil. I need to be able to let clients, my manager, and other folks on my sales team get in touch with me if anything important comes up. A cell phone should do the job and would be pretty much nice to have for other personal shit.

Anyway, what do you recommend. There is a Verizon wireless store down the way that I'm going to go to this afternoon. I want something that's not going to be to ridiculous price-wise and maybe has a few of the bells and whistles a lot of the phones have today, like text messaging and maybe the potential to add on Internet access down the road if I find that would be useful. I want the fucking thing to be reliable connection wise. No bullshit or is that inherent in all cell phones? Also, I'd be interested in hearing about what other companies might offer other than Verizon. Does anyone use them? Are they good, bad, ok, etc? Who might be better? And so on...

[Gooch]

verizons phone suck...but prob best service/coverage

i use Sprint...no real complaints. $35 plus $15 unlimited internet per month. But not sure on their coverage in your area. They just took over Nextel.

Cingular/ATT's combined network makes them pretty big on coverage, and they have good phones.

[diceisgod]

Why do they suck? Connection wise? They look ugly?

[Gooch]

verizon's phones has less features and bells & whistles. They offer less phone deals, and charge more for service. maybe that has changed since last year, but i doubt it.

your best bet is to look at all 3 mentioned (verizon, cingular, sprint)...look at their coverage in your home, work and travel area....and compare phones. B/c phone is important: it's clarity, dependiblity, etc. I looked on <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cnet.com">http://www.cnet.com</a><!-- w --> cell phone reviews to find the one I wanted...which was one that had a built-in keyboard to be able to answer emails and was a PDA. From there, once I had a few phones in mind...I did comparisons on the big 3 to see who had best deal, least cash paid for the phone i needed, and best service/coverage for my area. For me, Sprint has fit the bill, and I love my Treo phone. But, depends on what you need. My issue was mutiple uses, reception, since my last phone constantly lost it's signal and made voices too muffled.

[diceisgod]

good site

[Goatweed]

you need to weigh whats more important to you - service & coverage, or flashy phones.

Verizon has the best service IMO. I've had them for close to 11 years and outside of a few dead spots on Staten Island, I never have reception issues. The phones they offer are decent, but they're pretty limited. Last time I got a new phone, there were maybe 8-10 models to choose from, with at least 4 of them being absolute pieces of garbage. Like Gooch said that might have changed, I've had my phone for 2 years now. I got text & internet, but Im thinking of dropping the interent - it's not worth the $$, and it's nowhere near like using the net at home or at work (on a PC).

Just make sure, no matter where you go, you get the best deal overall - and don't let them snow you to a more expensive plan becuase of "more free minutes" because what good are they if you don't use them? (Assuming you don't, if you do then by all means go for it).

[Galt]

I used to have AT&T, but moved to Verizon when I move to NYC. I haven't had any problems with verizon. Good coverage.

The "bells and whistles" of cell phones are useless. All I want is a phone. The novelty of a camera, internet access, news and weather feeds, all that shit.....pointless.

Depending on the size of your company, you may see if you can get a deal on the monthly contract. I get 15% off a month because of the company I worked

[Black Lazerus]

verizon has the best coverage and less dropped calls, my verizon phone even gives me an alert when it's about to drop one.

[LZMF1]

verizon is the way to go.

[HedCold]

verizon has the best coverage and less dropped calls, my verizon phone even gives me an alert when it's about to drop one.

which phone is that?

[Black Lazerus]

The LGvx4600

[HedCold]

my contract is up so i would get $100 off my next phone, but i don't know what to get. if they didn't fuck up the V710 I'd pay the money for that.

now I'm thinking of just switching to Cingular, but no phone there really stands out to me either

[crx girl]

i have verizon and i haven't had any problems with it. much better than tmobile which i used to have. also i recently lost my phone so i bought a new one off ebay and got the lg camera phone since it was going for about the same amount as my old phone. don't really use it that much, but the other day i was in the subway and it rang. i thought that was pretty cool.

[drusilla]

i had at&t for a long time & it was really really bad. i couldn't use my phone indoors & calls would cut out all the time. i switched to verizon & its so much better. the text messaging is really easy, but it sucks cause they do charge you when you receive messages. you can get a deal for like 600 messages a month for like $5.99 or something like that, but then you get charged i think 10 cents for every message you send after that & 2 cents for everyone you recieve. at & t didn't charge for received messages. but the service is so much better. always clear.

[Keyser Soze]

i dont care about the phone as much as getting a consistant signal and the best rate.

i switched from sprint to cingular when they offered their 1500 minutes with rollover plan for $39.95

thats pretty much the best deal going. the phone sucks though, a sony ericksson. i need to replace it with one of their motorolas.

[drusilla]

i had a motorola phone with at&t. it was the worst. the antenna kept breaking off. i have an LG now. much better. much sturdier.

[LZMF1]

i'm diggin' the motorola razr. i may have to get rid of my samsung SCH-a670 and upgrade.