Ask Slashdot: Best Smartphone Plan For a US Vacation?

SJrX writes "I am planning on visiting the Pacific Northwest for several weeks, and was looking for the best smartphone option available. Roaming data rates and SMS rates are ridiculously high (best plans are $0.80 / MB, and $0.75 / message). Beyond AT&T and Verizon Prepaid, are there any other options? (I'm on an iPhone 4 so GSM is a must.) I assume in the US, I have no credit history for which to qualify for a plan, and a contract is obviously out of the question. Data and SMS are the only important things, with a few hundred minutes being plenty. I'm only planning on being in the US for 2 or 3 weeks, but mainly in rural areas (US Route 101) so large (3G) coverage is important."

Comments

AT&T

[Moderator]

Hello,

Normally, I would recommend Simple Mobile which is contract-free using the T-Mobile network. $60 will get you unlimited everything. Since you have an iPhone though, and 3G is a must, you are probably stuck using AT&T's 3G network. That probably means getting a SIM card and then paying $75/mo for a whopping 200MB on the Pay as you Go plan. But hey, at least you will get 4G.

Welcome to America.

It's not a must

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave your iPhone behind and buy a local prepaid.

Re:It's not a must

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Border guards have a hardon for smartphones. Leave your laptop behind too. What I'm trying to figure out is why anyone in their right mind would cross our border willingly, for a vacation no less.

Re:It's not a must

[syousef]

This. Border guards have a hardon for smartphones. Leave your laptop behind too. What I'm trying to figure out is why anyone in their right mind would cross our border willingly, for a vacation no less.

There are some things in the U.S. and Canada I'd have like to have seen (and photographed!) before I died. Niagra falls, The Grand Canyon, Yosemite, The Canadian Rockies. But I am very much put off by the idea of being finger-printed and possibly having some TSA agent's bad day turn into my bad lifetime or having my things seized and not returned. And now that I have a family it's not just me that I have to think of. I can imagine entering into some twilight reality where my 3 year old talking back to a TSA agent results in him being injured or us all being held indefinitely. So though I'm only in my mid 30s, and my children will grow up, I doubt that I will ever be able to justify a trip to the US to see these things. I'm not the only one. C'est la vie.

Good Luck!

[chill]

If you insist on GSM, that means AT&T or T-Mobile. If you want rural coverage of 3G, that pretty much leaves out T-Mobile.

So...AT&T it is. (I'd say "We have a winner!", but I'd be lying.)

Buy a pre-paid SIM and be done with it. The smartphone plan is like $2 / day on days used for unlimited talk and text. 3 Gb of data for a month will run you $35. The SIM itself should be free.

Re:Good Luck!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you insist on GSM, that means AT&T or T-Mobile. If you want rural coverage of 3G, that pretty much leaves out T-Mobile.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and was a T-Mobile customer until recently. I liked their company, but their rural coverage - even phone coverage - is terrible. IIRC they still have some sort of cross-network roaming agreement with AT&T, but you have to have a phone that can handle those frequencies (I guess an iPhone qualifies).

But what's really odd is - T-Mobile's data rates have been higher than AT&T's, despite the lousy network!

Having said all that... I'm not sure how AT&T's 3G coverage is around highway 101. The Oregon and Washington coasts get pretty hilly and mountainous in many spots, and their coverage map is not encouraging. I think you may need to take sackvillian's advice and put the phone down, whether you like it or not. Your friends can live without constant posts of bad photos on Facebook.

(Sorry for the anonymous post - I'm 93 Escort Wagon)

Re:Good Luck!

[ColdWetDog]

If you want any rural 3G with an iphone, it leaves out everybody.

You get Edge (if you're lucky) and you will like it!

Have you considered leaving your phone at home and going on a real vacation?

T-mobile pay as you go

[godIsaDJ]

Just came back from a coast-2-coast. Faced the same problem. Get a T-mobile pay as you go. You have unlimited internet for $1.5/day with a web day pass that you purchase using your PAYG balance.

Re:T-mobile pay as you go

[hockeyrink]

I concur. Just back from a 2 week trip to San Francisco from Canada, and my Canadian Bell (unlocked; rooted) Galaxy S connected on EDGE speeds for pretty much the whole time (darn mountain ranges...).It was supposed to be only 2Gig of data, but I got an SMS mid way through the trip that informed me that my plan was updated to unlimited data. It was the "Prepaid Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB data plan" for $70. We got 2 SIMS with this plan (a T-Mobile G1 on HSPA fast speed, and my Canadian Bell Galaxy S maxing out on EDGE), and one with just talk/text (for daughter) for $30.

Although the G1 is a slow phone, I found the GPS unit superior, and it made an excellent Google GPS navigator. Also worked well as portable wifi hotspot with the rooted "Open Garden" application. And don't forget to load up GasBuddy too.

Just make sure to add the $10 "International SMS" option if you plan to message out of the USA. Frustrating to get SMS from home, but not to be able to reply!

FYI, both my G1 and my Canadian Galaxy S both get HSPA speeds in Hong Kong!

Re:T-mobile pay as you go

[SoftwareArtist]

Note that T-mobile has two different types of prepaid plans. With "pay as you go" plans, you put in an amount of money that can be used for voice, SMS, or data. With "pay by the month" plans, you pay a fixed amount per month, but with no multi-month commitment. Either one might end up best for you, depending on how much you plan to use the phone.

If GSM only...

[Dahamma]

...then you can throw out Verizon, they are CDMA.

Of the majors, that leaves you with AT&T or T-Mobile. There are a lot of smaller GSM carriers, but many of them are regional and/or will end up roaming in areas they don't have coverage, so I'm not sure if it's worth looking to hard at them.

TAKE YOUR VACATION!

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

HWY 101 rocks, don't ruin it w/ a damn phone!

Cricket

[Jane Q. Public]

I am really surprised nobody so far has mentioned Cricket. They have unlimited plans, cover all 50 states, and NO CONTRACT. You pay month-to-month.

I used Cricket for several years and they were probably the least-hassle mobile phone company I ever dealt with. The only reason I switched away from them is that I needed data and at the time (this was about 5 years ago or so) they didn't have it.

Check them out.

walmart

[ThurstonMoore]

Go to walmart and buy one of their pre-paid smartphones. It will also add to the American experience.

Re:walmart

[TrevorB]

I'm actually planning on this. I'm also taking a "vacation" to the states, where the only way I could get away for 3 weeks was to be tied to a cellphone.

Apparently Tracfones are ludicrously cheap ($10) and call call anywhere in the US at 20 cents/min. I'm planning on tying this to a VoIP line, so I can use the cell to call outside the US for only another couple cents per minute.

www.prepaidgsm.net

[agw]

Usually a link to www.prepaidgsm.net settles this question for all your vacation destinations.

It's really a great site.

My personal choice is always to put a prepaid GSM card with some cheap data plan into my primary smart phone and then use an older phone with my home country SIM to receive calls or make calls where my caller id is important. Others work around that by forwarding calls and using special services like skype's caller id function.

Surprised no one mentioned ekit

[Tobenisstinky]

http://ekit.com/ekit/home/

I used them for a trip to europe, prices were half of what my local carrier wanted for European roaming. It included data. I have an iPhone 3GS but I had to unlock it to use the sim card.