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Is a phone around a $100 that will work with one of those face adapters. https://www.virginmobileusa.co... looks like it will suffice and it just went on sale.

I just did a web search for "unlimited data plan". Let's see what we find...

http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-p...
https://www.metropcs.com/cell-...
http://www.boostmobile.com/sho...
https://www.virginmobileusa.co...

Yep, every one of them describes the plan as "UNLIMITED" in big bold letters. Of course, it you search really carefully, you'll sometimes discover some tiny text at the bottom of the page explaining that "unlimited" doesn't actually mean unlimited at all. It's just what they call "false advertising".

Sprint uses a whitelist, allowing only phone models that it has approved to connect to its network. From this page: "Only Sprint-approved devices may be used on the Sprint network." I'd be surprised if Verizon didn't have the same policy. They can get away with this because CDMA2000, the technology stack used in Verizon and Sprint service areas without 4G coverage, allows it.

Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.

Eh?
Canada. While big cities used to be the one ones that had "unlimited" plans, nowadays anywhere in the country offers unlimited calling in-country, unlimited text (for many, in-country, for Virgin Mobile it's to anywhere in the world), 2GB+ of data, etc. About $65-70 (say $60-65USD). Oh, wait, they're in the US too.
My understanding is that U.S. carrier rates are lower... but yours still ding you for... text messages? Wow, they've been free here for years. And we're talking places with a population of 7k here. Hell, they're available in the town about 1h away that has a population of 700.

Also free in the parts of Asia I've been to (worldwide text, often enough). Not 100% sure about Europe in general but I believe those are free as well based on people I know in various areas. My German is fairly rusty but I'm pretty sure that Frei-SMS und Frei-MMS follows that.

New Zealand... Texts included (as well as to Aus)
Australia... SMS unlimited in-country

So, by 99% of the the world... I'm guessing you mean with your carrier in USA? Who is being myopic?

Looks like the cheapest flip phone on virginmobile has no camera:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com...

you can use a WiFi connect from a tablet just as easily as any PC

True. Like my laptop, my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet supports Wi-Fi. On both, I'd need additional hardware to get to Verizon.

you need additional hardware to get to Verizon from a PC.

And you need additional hardware to get to a television from an iPhone: $100 for wireless AirPlay (Apple TV) or $50 for wired AirPlay (Lightning Digital AV Adapter). Some Android phones and tablets, on the other hand, have an actual mini- or micro-HDMI port compatible with an affordable mini- or micro-HDMI cable from Monoprice.

And come on - who brings a laptop into Home Depot/Lowe's???

I do, for one. I don't often use it inside the store except when waiting for another party to finish shopping. But when I do, I have become adept at unfolding my 10" laptop at just the right angle to fit neatly into the child seat. I concede, however, that some of the things I do on my laptop while I ride the bus to and from Lowe's aren't "typical" things that "most people" do, such as lightweight hobby coding, but they are things that Apple just doesn't have an app for. Fortunately, I've also become adept at downloading articles while on Wi-Fi and reading them while offline on the bus, to the point that other passengers often ask me how much I "pay for Internet on that thing".

What carriers restrict tethering now?

I checked today, and tethering on an iPhone still costs an extra $180 per year on Virgin Mobile, on top of the premium that iPhone users are already paying over feature phone users.

PCs come with HDTV compatible video outputs at no additional charge

So you think it has nothing at all to do with the price of the PC. Interesting.

Virtually every PC at every price since the 1990s has had a VGA output, an HDMI or DVI-D output, or a DVI-I output that carries both VGA- and DVI-D video signals. Every HDTV except for very early CRT HDTVs has an HDMI input, which can take DVI-D video signals through another cheap cable from Monoprice, and most that I've seen also have a VGA input.

If Linux gamers are virgins, then any Android gamer is a virgin even if they didn't get their phone from a Sprint MVNO. And if FreeBSD gamers are also virgins, then every Mac gamer, iOS gamer, and PlayStation 4 gamer is a virgin. What platforms does that leave that can coexist with sexual activity? And why is there so much stigma against virgins anyway? It's not everybody's job to propagate the species.

Virgin Mobile: http://newsroom.virginmobileusa.com/networkvision

In a quick skim, I didn't see them say "LTE to almost every cell site" but only LTE nationwide. I hope someone can find a source for the former, because that would be good news indeed.

I'm a VM customer for my phone & my teenager's. He's still grandfathered on the $25/mo plan - 300 minutes of talk (he averages 60), unlimited text & data.

From Virgin: Venture, Chaser, and Optimus Elite still have 2.3. Ting also has the Optimus Elite.

The cheapest payLo plan I see is $20/mo.

That's true among monthly plans, which appear to be designed for people who have dropped their land line. But pay as you go plans start cheaper: $20 per 90 days. They must have eliminated the $15 per 3 months tier fairly recently. It appears $20 buys 400 minutes in 1 month or 100 minutes in 3 months.

Can you link me to it? I think it is now $35/month.

As I said, it's $30 with autopay. Virgin Mobile saves you $5/month on various (maybe all) plans if you set up credit card autopay. I was doing that when I had a prepaid mobile phone, and was down to $5/month overall cost (it charged $15 every 3 months).

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/iPhone4S-16GB-phone/features/#plan

Though here's the link I have posted before about even cheaper prepaid plans. I have no idea which if any can be used with an unlocked iPhone.
http://www.cellguru.net/prepaid_compare.htm

True, however there are people out there looking for a great 'texting phone', and those people are looking for the lowest priced option. They aren't buying apps because they aren't interested in apps - rather than they aren't buying apps because the phone was cheap.

Cheap 'texting phones' tend not to be smart phones and therefor they buy no apps.

This is a 'texting phone'
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/samsung-montage-phone/features/

If you are running 2.x I feel for you. That device should be replaced by now.

Some U.S. carriers are still selling 2.x phones, especially carriers that operate on models other than subsidy. See for example Intercept, Chaser, Optimus Slider, Optimus Elite, and Triumph.

LTE is for all the time, that is why I have an unlimited plan.

Provided you happen to live in one of the major cities that has unlimited LTE.

On my Wifi it would take even less time than over the LTE.

Which may mean a trip to the restaurant.

If you are running 2.x I feel for you. That device should be replaced by now.

Some U.S. carriers are still selling 2.x phones, especially carriers that operate on models other than subsidy. See for example Intercept, Chaser, Optimus Slider, Optimus Elite, and Triumph.

LTE is for all the time, that is why I have an unlimited plan.

Provided you happen to live in one of the major cities that has unlimited LTE.

On my Wifi it would take even less time than over the LTE.

Which may mean a trip to the restaurant.

If you are running 2.x I feel for you. That device should be replaced by now.

Some U.S. carriers are still selling 2.x phones, especially carriers that operate on models other than subsidy. See for example Intercept, Chaser, Optimus Slider, Optimus Elite, and Triumph.

LTE is for all the time, that is why I have an unlimited plan.

Provided you happen to live in one of the major cities that has unlimited LTE.

On my Wifi it would take even less time than over the LTE.

Which may mean a trip to the restaurant.

If you are running 2.x I feel for you. That device should be replaced by now.

Some U.S. carriers are still selling 2.x phones, especially carriers that operate on models other than subsidy. See for example Intercept, Chaser, Optimus Slider, Optimus Elite, and Triumph.

LTE is for all the time, that is why I have an unlimited plan.

Provided you happen to live in one of the major cities that has unlimited LTE.

On my Wifi it would take even less time than over the LTE.

Which may mean a trip to the restaurant.

If you are running 2.x I feel for you. That device should be replaced by now.

Some U.S. carriers are still selling 2.x phones, especially carriers that operate on models other than subsidy. See for example Intercept, Chaser, Optimus Slider, Optimus Elite, and Triumph.

LTE is for all the time, that is why I have an unlimited plan.

Provided you happen to live in one of the major cities that has unlimited LTE.

On my Wifi it would take even less time than over the LTE.

Which may mean a trip to the restaurant.

You do know that tablets can have 3G (4G) [or] a mobile hot-spot

I'm aware that they can, but how many actually do? Please see my reply to toriver.

How about tethering?

To switch from my current phone plan to one allowing tethering would cost an additional $45 per month: $30/mo to switch from a flip phone on a $5/mo payLo plan to an Android phone on a $35/mo Beyond Talk plan, plus $15/mo for the tethering rider. (source)

I can't speak for anyone else since cervical bone-spurs are doing a number on my typing

If you have a typing impairment, and you have found the Nexus 7's speech recognition to work well for dictation, then I guess the Nexus 7 is the right choice for you. I too have a Nexus 7; I ought to try dictation on mine to see if it can "wreck a nice beach" as well as you claim it does, especially with someone else in the household playing the TV or radio at such a volume to be heard in another room. We'll have to wait and see whether dictation on the Surface is any good.

You're a moron. This phone has high-end specs, where there are Android phones still selling in the US which are lower-spec than FirefoxOS is targeting, and which are going, non-subsidized, for as low as $40. There is no lower-end than that, and FirefoxOS most certainly will not out-perform Android.

  http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/venture-phone/features/

I see it in stores all the time, Virgin Mobile (runs off the Sprint network) sells the iPhone currently, latest model as well.

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/iphone

For taking the time to highlight one specific phone, seems funny to miss such a highly marketed appearance of the device.

http://virginmobileusa.com/

$35 for unlimited data and texting, $55 for unlimited everything

(Yes it's unlimited, but in the TOS they say that they will throttle you at some point, 2.5GB or something, look for yourself; the point though is they won't cut you off however)

Bullshit prepaid carries don't subsidize phones, they do and they lock the phone to their network. Yes, I know they allow you to bring your own phone, I acknowledged that when I mentioned buying an unlocked iPhone direct from Apple, but that has no bearing on whether or not they subsidize the phones. They don't subsidize *iPhones* because Apple won't allow it, but they damned well do subsidize other phones. Every single phone on this page, aside from the two iPhone models, is subsidized. Take, for example, the LG Optimus Elite (the first phone listed there that I found on another carrier); Sprint gives it away for free with a 2 year contract, $249.99 unsibsidized, $149.99 through Virgin Mobile. It's cheap because it's an entry-level phone; it's not even on par with the iPhone 3Gs, which can be had, unsibsidized, from AT&T for $375.99. That LG phone is subsidized, buddy, as are the rest of the Android phones on that page, and the $15-50 dumb-phones they offer. The only thing on that page that is not subsidized, I'll say it again, are the iPhones.

Virgin Mobile doesn't offer any Android phones that come close to comparing with even the iPhone 3Gs, save for maybe the HTC Evo V, which I'd compare to the HTC Evo 4G on Sprint, except that the Evo V has a 3d camera. For the sake of fairness, we'll say that adds nothing to the price of the phone, Sprint's subsidized price is $199.99, while Virgin is selling it for 299.99; unsubsidized, it's a $549.99 phone. Now, if the 3d camera adds to the price of the phone, which you and I both know it does, Virgin is subsidizing it by more than is indicated by the above.

Statistically speaking at least in the US...

Because that's all that matters, right?

[The] 3 major providers who carry the iPhone are still only a small fraction of the world cellular market, and in that market, there are many, many more Android phones in use.

I could go on limiting the scope in ways that make my position look valid, as well, but I don't have to. Also, your second point only works to further prove the point I was trying to make. Regardless which of these estimates you beleive, it's clear that Android sales surpassed iPhone sales by the end of last year. If you go with the lower estimate of 32 million Android phones sold by Samsung (and ONLY Samsung), and spend about 10 seconds doing some research, you'll find that there were certainly more than 3.1 million Android phones sold in the same quarter by other manufacturers, a statistic that tops Apple's 35.06 million figure. If you go with either of the other estimates, Samsung singlehandedly beat Apple's sales in Q3 of last year. Samsung's market share has been steadily growing since then, while Apple's growth seems to be slowing. Samsung's sales have been ahead of Apple's all year; now, add the other Android phone manufacturers to that and tell me, which platform is more in demand?

But, of course, you'll just limit the scope back to the US again, and you're right, Android is on a decline in the US, but it's exploding everywhere else. The US comprises a mere 5% of the world population, with China having more than 4x the population of the US; I should say the US market doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

There's always Virgin Mobile. Yes, I know they're a subsidiary of Sprint (in the U.S.), and they probably won't be getting the iPhone 5 anytime soon, but you can get the iPhone 4S with unlimited data and texting for $30 a month.

>>>Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost? It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 instead of your $300..... Geez, and they say Apple users are fanbois...

Fuck you to fucking hell you damn Limey britsih ciock. RIGHT HERE: VirginMobile UNSUBSIDIZED PHOEN. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/htc-evo-phone/features/ You stupid twit. Now wonder you lost your empire you painsy-assed git . Go run past the Oympics rifle range and get yourself shot

Thank you. Have a nice day.

>>>Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost? It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 instead of your $300..... Geez, and they say Apple users are fanbois...

Fuck you to fucking hell you damn Limey britsih ciock. RIGHT HERE: VirginMobile UNSUBSIDIZED PHOEN. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/htc-evo-phone/features/ You stupid twit. Now wonder you lost your empire you painsy-assed git . Go run past the Oympics rifle range and get yourself shot

First, I already pay $60 per month for Internet access at home. Why should I have to pay more in order to have something to do away from home? Ideally, an application would download data to the device's memory while online, store my changes while I work offline, and then upload the changes once I'm online again.

Second, Virgin Mobile's cheapest Broadband2Go plan is $35 per month, not $30 per month. It's limited to 2 GB per month unless the customer moves a couple hundred miles to a 4G city, so it can't replace one's home ISP. What carrier are you looking at that includes either standalone mobile broadband for $30 per month or a smartphone plan including tethering for $35 per month, which is $30 per month more than the $5 per month that I currently pay Virgin Mobile for dumbphone service?

Virgin Mobile offers several smartphones for less than $200 without a contract: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp

Prepaid

That one's only 2.5 GB, I'm pretty sure tmobile has better plans but their website is atrocious. As are the websites of most phone companies, prepaid or not. Virgin seems to be the easiest to actually find the price tables (though, they still hide them, and have split the two kinds of plans into separate areas despite actually being available for all the phones...) The other prepaid plans I'm aware of are comparable, though.

You're right: it's only 2.5 GB of high-speed data for $35, not 3 GB for $35, but it's close.

    I'd say you should.

    I was laid off several years ago. At the time, I had already cancelled my personal cell, because work required that I carry theirs. When they laid me off, suddenly I had no phone. No way for people to call (namely, prospective employers).

    I was already researching prepaid providers, that I could send data over their network for telemetry of my car. It was just something I was toying with. I wanted to have it send GPS data, OBD-II data, and the occasional shot from a forward and rear facing camera.

    On the drive home, I swung into Best Buy. They were on the way, and had some dirt cheap phones. I think I spent all of $15 on the phone, and $30 for unlimited use.

    Most of my friends have gone to prepaid plans. They use a variety of providers. I'm still sticking with Boost. I've had a few smart phones with them. It meets all my qualifications. I get unlimited ... well .. everything. I can talk as long as I want. I can tether it as needed. When I want a newer, better phone, I just buy it. I don't get the special discount rate by contracting for an extra years, with the risk of upsetting them and paying overages. When they decide to screw with me, I don't want to be contractually obliged to pay early termination fees.

I could decide tomorrow that Boost is horrible, sell my phone on Craigslist or eBay, and start with another prepaid provider. The only advantage I have with staying with Boost is that they have their "shrinkage" plan, and I've been with them long enough to get a nice discount on my rate.

A few people have said Virgin Mobile is the best. nice. Except for the not so fine print.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp?tab=tab2#
"All Plans Include 2.5GB Per Month of Full-Speed Data"

Unlimited, as long as you use 2.5GB or less.

Boost doesn't mention it, because it seems they monitor just about nothing. The only active monitoring that they appear to do is watching for the end of your paid period. By the ToS, tethering can be considered a violation of the ToS, but it's by their discretion. They don't really care, unless it's your only connection, and your using it to download torrents, or some other high utilization activity.

I've tethered something like a half dozen times in the last year. When I've done it, except once, I was very satisfied with their speeds. A few times, it was because I was in a hotel with awful speeds. It's not my 25Mb/s FiOS line, but I can connect from any arbitrary location, including driving down the road (as a passenger, of course). The only time it didn't work was at the last space shuttle launch, and the cell network was pretty much saturated. We had an awful time even getting phone calls out.

Have you tried Virgin Mobile? They have Android phones, including the Motorola Triumph, which has a 1 Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM. I've loaded it up with CyanogenMod, which while not officially supported, is being worked on. I'm running it on my phone right now (though it does have the odd issue of freezing at the boot screen if you leave it alone too long, but then, it's beta). Add in a 32GB microSD, and it's hour of fun.

Does ATT sell any devices that are specifically for use with PCs? Like the link below? If so then they can't use that "no tethering" clause to escape false advertising charges ("unlimited") that future customers might bring:

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/broadband2go.html

The other thing pointing towards a pre-paid vendor is that most of the devices you'll see for the big carriers will be the price with a one or two year contract - someone coming from abroad may not be aware of this & buy something they don't need. I have used the Virgin Mobile 3g dongle:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/ovation-mc760.html
and it works well in areas where Sprint has coverage. You should be able to pick one up at a Radio Shack or Walmart (the Walmart ones will actually give you a better rate for the data), but both their websites are showing them out of stock so maybe it's being phased out. There's a MiFi too if so, for around $130. Don't buy a used one on ebay unless you can guarantee that the seller will provide you the user name & password for the account it was registered with, without that it's useless. The Virgin stuff won't roam to other carriers' towers like a Sprint branded one, but it's contract free. While you're in the cities you should be fine, but in the boonies it might not have coverage.

Not UK, but Virgin Mobile USA. Unlimited text, MMS, data, and 300 minutes for $35. No contract. I've had the plan for years (it was $25 until very recently).

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp

virgin mobile.1500 minutes, 1500 texts, $30. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/paylo-plans.jsp

so obviously you know as well as I that "unlimited" data runs as little as $35/mo.

You have a point; I had forgotten that the data included with Beyond Talk plans was in fact unlimited. But this is still limited to applications designed for a smartphone. In the near term, you'll still need a PC even if only to port all the applications that you use to Android. Entry-level phones don't appear to support an external HDMI monitor, and even with a more expensive phone, I'd probably end up having to SSH or VNC to an application server to run anything not yet ported to Android.

so obviously you know as well as I that "unlimited" data runs as little as $35/mo.

You have a point; I had forgotten that the data included with Beyond Talk plans was in fact unlimited. But this is still limited to applications designed for a smartphone. In the near term, you'll still need a PC even if only to port all the applications that you use to Android. Entry-level phones don't appear to support an external HDMI monitor, and even with a more expensive phone, I'd probably end up having to SSH or VNC to an application server to run anything not yet ported to Android.

The original OLPC made lots of sense, even if they botched the execution... I'll point to the massive success of the EEEPC as proof that they were only slightly off the mark. Personally, I thought going with a dirt cheap B&W LCD screen to start would have solved most of their problems, but I digress.

But this tablet makes no sense. The Aakash / UbiSlate tablets cost half as much (for real, in production) and is designed to serve exactly the same purpose as OLPC. In addition, Android smartphones (with qwerty keyboard, making them vastly more useful) retail for $100 here on the shelves in the US (no contract, not subsidized, not on sale). We're talking about full-featured mobile devices, much like what I use for 90% of my computing purposes, and am typing on right now...

OLPC's main reason to exist last time around was extreme power savings, due to the great expense of electricity in the third world. But now, normal mass market mobile devices now rival OLPC's energy targets, as well as having more than sufficient durability designed-in.

  http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phones/samsung-intercept-phone.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_tablet

I don't see any reason for OLPC to make custom hardware anymore, rather than just becoming a software company, possibly + logistical support.

If they have cell reception then how about http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/

Back ins 2000, 1Gflop cost about $1000 in computing hardware. As we approach the year 2012, 1Gflop cost is nearing $1 of hardware (and huge savings in power usage). That is pretty amazing to me.

Sorry, but I'm unimpressed. That "$1" device won't DO ANYTHING without a good $50 of other stuff wrapped around it, so measuring that "$1" piece is pretty pointless and arbitrary.

The cost of a useful device is much more interesting. I'm very impressed I can get pretty good Android phone (Samsung Intercept) these days, with keyboard, for $99. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phones/samsung-intercept-phone.jsp

That's much more impressive than a $25 Raspberry Pi, lacking all I/O. Hell, get it just for a wireless SSH & VNC client. It's a great price for a mini Android tablet, even if you never use it with the (cheap) cell service. It would be absolutely awesome if somebody ported (rootless) X11 to Android, and we could build-up a userland on such a device, and cross-compile and install all our familiar desktop apps seamlessly. Barring that, maybe someone would be interested in merging the needed changes into a stock Linux kernel to boot the device, then writing a working native X11 driver, giving us a tiny full-fledged linux box on the go.

On that same note, x86 hardware is pretty dirt-cheap, too... An old Asus EEE-900 can be had for just $125 these days. A full-fledged, low-power, highly portable x86 computer, with a decent sized keyboard ready for touch-typing, just $125.

That's the real baseline for comparison. That $1 gigaflop doesn't mean anything if I can't do anything with it for $1, and can't add 100 of them to my server for $100, or anywhere CLOSE to that.

I assume you're a fan of mobile data. Sprint is by far not the cheapest cellular provider. For cheapest, look into Virgin Mobile's $40/mo "unlimited" data and texting and T-Mobile's newest offering: "unlimited" 4G prepaid for $30/mo.

Multitouch MP3 player plus $20/month prepaid MiFi?

Hi, I hate to post as AC but I do not have an account but am a long time reader! ;)

I own one of those Virgin Mobile phones on the cheapest prepaid plan, which gets you 300 talk minutes and unlimited text/data (I don't talk on the phone much..). My phone is the Virgin Mobile branded Samsung Intercept (this one). I've had it since last December.

I do not have access to broadband at my home...no cable, no DSL, no wireless, no nothing. So when I found out I could tether with the phone and use my 3G connection as a alternative to my 14k dial-up I was very, very interested! ;) I got instructions and rooted the phone ASAP and installed barnacle wifi tether, which got me ad-hoc mode and worked just fine with my PC.

The speeds vary a lot of course but generally:

- At night I've gotten speeds up in the 200-300kB/s downstream and 50kBs upstrem. I'm not saying this is sustained speeds or anything, but you can constantly hit these speeds in bursts.

Any other time it just depends on the time of day. You can tell when a lot of other people are using the network. Sometimes it drops out and won't come back for several minutes, sometimes I have to put my phone in airplane mode for a few seconds to get it to reconnect to the network before it'll work again. Hell, sometimes I have to pull the damn battery.

But it works, and for $25 a month I have unlimited access to the 'net at a decent speed. I got rid of the land line, I'm paying way less for an internet connection now than I was before.

Since I first rooted the phone I learned about custom ROMs and what-not so I've done several things that I'd rather not go into in detail to this phone. I'll just say that the intercept is a decent phone for someone that wants a phone and not a portable gaming device. It won't do netflix either, so if that's important to you buy a better android device! This phone is rather sluggish, even with the latest official update from virgin mobile (2.2). Once you root it and tinker with it a bit it becomes a rather nice device though...but again, its a low end Android phone for sure!

I'm ashamed to say what I paid for mine! ;)

Anyway, I figured I should post this since I've been using Virgin Mobile via android phone as my primary ISP for several months now. Also, I eventually figured out that I could tether without having to be in ad-hoc mode, so it works with all my wifi devices now (like my Wii!). The ping times on the online games I play ain't too bad...in the 200ms range...better than dial up. ;)

Good day all, love this site. :)

Most of the fees are subtracted from your minutes.
The biggest fee is the (depending on plan) all-your-remaining-minutes-belong-to-us fee applied at the end of each month or all-your-top-off-minutes-incur-a-100%-charge-after-30-days fee, but there are plenty of others fees too, including the listening-to-voicemail fee, we-round-up-and-charge-you-the-remainder fee, and the checking-your-balance-more-than-five-times-in-one-day fee. Oh, and try making an international call, and see what happens. You get deducted minutes not only for the calling time, but for connecting too.

Then there's the regular government surcharges, of course: http://web.virginmobileusa.com/help/plans/paygo/surcharges

What is this obsession with the desktop market?

Desktops and laptops appeal to authors, or people who create substantial works, as opposed to people who only view works. Authors want to see a lot of text on the screen at once, and they want precise input devices, such as a keyboard for fast, accurate text entry or a pressure-sensitive stylus. And a lot of people aren't willing to pay an extra 50 USD per month for an Internet connection that drops to ISDN speed once usage exceeds 2.5 GB per month.[1]

[1] Source: Virgin Mobile USA, a Sprint company

You can get unlimited data and 3G on Sprint; it's just branded Virgin mobile (Virgin used to be a partner, but Sprint bought them out). There are other trade-offs to going with Virgin (like lower end phones), but I've been happy with the service.

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp Yeah, he said it was unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 voice minutes. If you are using an Android phone and using Google Navigation, you don't have to have any special navigation plan. It runs off your data connection to Google's servers. Technically if you always connect to Wifi, plan your route, then leave and never reroute, you wouldn't even need a cellular data plan because it caches your route.

Virgin Mobile definitely runs on Sprint's network. And I think there was a misunderstanding that he didn't take the same phone from AT&T to Virgin. I bet he sold the AT&T one and got a similar one on Virgin.

I want to be able to carry on working in the UK as well as in the US. I don't need to use the phone, so I am looking for an unlocked phone that can be used on pay-as-you-go data plans on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is the best as-you-go data plans on the US side? anything better than link: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp

DARG! I hate replying to my own posts, but I should have mentioned, if you're in the United States Virgin Mobile has a $25/mo + Tax Android with a V6 process here. The Freescale A Pad has all the specs you could ask for and a bargin price, but I've heard bad, bad things about the build quality...

Check out VirginMobile's Data Plans.

$25, prepaid, for 300 minutes and 'unlimited data'.

The LG Optimus V is on-sale right now at Target for $130 + $20 Gift Card. Plus, you can get cheap rates on the refills:

Save an extra 5% with your RedCard. I like to buy my Top Up Cards with my RedCard at Target, since I get 5% off. The best deal is getting the $20 RECHARGEABLE Top-Up card from Target. For every 5 charges, you get $10 free. Plus 5% off with the RedCard.

Does any provider in the US offer this kind of service on a GSM network? Last time I checked when traveling to the USA the minimum I'd have to pay for a non-trivial amount of data from AT&T or T-Mobile was $70-80/mo. Kind of crazy when I can get a pre-paid SIM with 500 MB (+voice minutes) for $30 from major Aussie providers, or even less through budget resellers.