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I am surprised nobody has brought this up yet. Usually, you get a free, or nearly free, phone with your contract. But not at walmart, be prepared to pay around $200 for your smart phone.

Walmart shows a number of cellphones free with service contracts, including Blackberries.

Falcon

I got 2 phones last week from http://letstalk.com/. Great company and almost all the phones are free if you get the 2 year service.

Do you wanna see my bill, jackass? The plan I have is America's Choice II, and it's listed as having 900 minutes. Apparently, it is not offered now, but I'm on a 2-year contract. For more information:

http://www.letstalk.com/product/product.htm?prId=3 0042

Or look at any of the internet listings for America's Choice 900. Anyone who modded YOU up must not have heard me when I said that I HAVE this plan.

http://n-gage.letstalk.com/brands/n-gage/new_landi ngpage.htm?depId=1&pgId=154 has the Rifts game for the N-Gage for $24.99 last I looked.

would like to see phones unlinked from the service providers

Well, you *can* buy your own phone and have a phone service plan seperately-- it's just that the plan providers provide a free or cheap phone if you sign up for a 1-year or 2-year contract. The month-to-month plans don't seem like a good deal.

But truthfully, it's hard to compare each plan side by side, because each plan comes with dozens of little exceptions and little add-on charges. Some websites, like Letstalk.com seem to leave out all sorts of important information-- sometimes I wonder if Letstalk is owned by the Cell Phone providers themselves.

I'm interested in how people get one of those phones from Amazon with 100% rebates, WITHOUT signing up for any sort of phone plan.

"In terms of wattage, wireless phones maximally emit power in the range of 0.2 to 0.6 watts."

Oh yeah, I'm getting the data only plan -- which would be $50 for the phone on the site you mentioned -- so the one I found on letstalk.com is the cheapest I found. Type in DANGERFRIEND for the $65 coupon if that's still available.

Here's an HTML-ized link for the forums.

Anyway, I had to call letstalk.com a couple times b/c it indicated to contact them on my order status on their website -- very nice system. I was instantly connected to customer service both times I called them.

First a little background: I'm a teenager, and for the past year or so I've been using a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phone I got for Christmas last year. It's treated me well, but lately I've found myself using more call time and it's more economic for me to use a calling plan than the VM $.25/min.

So, I looked around online for the best deals, because of course not having a highly paying job and being in school, money is of value to me. I compared some companies at letstalk.com, and liked what I saw. I spoke with my brother in college a couple hours away, and we decided to go in on a shared calling plan. I don't need to be real specific but we got a really good deal IMHO.

Now onto portability: Both my brother and I would like to keep our old phone numbers, so I checked with both my old and new providers to comfirm portability. Interestingly, when I placed the order I was told that only one phone number can be ported at a time for an order, so as recommended by the representative the two phones I ordered were actually originally purchased as two separate plans. When they arrive in a couple days, I'll have to call the new provider to switch back to the family plan. I was assuered there would be no penalty or difficulty in doing so.

I'm surprised that there was no integration for the porting of multiple phones at the same time, i.e. for family plans. Also, the online order form was slightly ambiguous about porting, so to play it safe I ordered by phone. As great as the internet is, the assurance of talking to a person was what I needed in this case.

From what I gather, the technology improves bandwidth for transmissions on one frequency. CDMA uses multiple frequencies and has already twice the bandwidth capacity. Any ideas if CDMA can have an improvement? Since what we are getting to is the information theory maximum, CDMA should get there too., but the article is silent on that.
Does this also mean I'll never get broadband on cellphones unless we use a different frequency :-( ?

Letstalk blows! I tried to use them, and had several problems. 1st they claimed that Voicestream covered my area, which it does not. Maybe that's not their fault since Voicestream claimed on their website to have coverage too. One thing to remember when dealing with VS is that they have terrible customer service. Plus don't ever put a deposit with them if your credit is bad. They won't send out refunds until your account has been closed and inactive for 60 days. And then it still takes another 60 days for them to send anything out. VS is fine if you don't have any problems, but if you call their Customer care you will get a different story every time you call. None of their agents are trained, sometimes it sounds like their just making stuff up. A good CS from VS is rare.

ranked by zip code or by manually selecting your location from a list of counties and cities by statehere. Once you have specified your location, it brings up a list of all the providers in your region with user and expert reviews covering most if not all of the features you need.

The phone itself is secondary to the service provider, though. A lot depends on how you plan to use the phone. There are 850Mhz cell providers like your Cell One's and Baby Bell's that offer either TDMA or CDMA digital in addition to AMPS Analog. The call quality of these technologies is inferior in my opinion to 1900 MHZ PCS service. Depending on where you live, you might have a choice of different providers using different technology. The difference will be one of national coverage. If you don't "roam" outside your local area, then just go with whoever has the best local coverage, rates and phones. If you plan on using the phone in other cities, you want to make sure your provider has coverage agreements. AT&T wireless has a pretty well-established national coverage, they sell phones that operate on 1900Mhz IS-136 air interface, plus they have multi-mode capability so they can step down to 850 Mhz TDMA or even AMPS if you roam in a city that doesn't have decent PCS coverage.