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Living Without a Cellphone

wsj.com

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#11
post #7

$65 a month?! shit,that's high! For 1GB od full speed internet, and after that unlimited lowspeed, with morze then enough calls, I pay $7.34 in Poland.

Most of the European countries that got internet infrastructure installed recently, like Poland and Romania for example, have very fast, very cheap internet access.

Some of my East European friends make me positively jealous with their cheap and very fast internet speeds compared to those in the UK.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#12
Old article but I switched carriers recently to cut costs.

We switched from sprint to ting and went from $160 a month to like $70 for two lines. I didn't like having to watch my data usage so we switched to t-mobile and we've got unlimited everything for I think around $80-90.

We ended up buying used one generation old iPhones (5s) which were about half the cost of buying the same model in the store. With t-mobile they do wifi calling, so I don't really care if the signal is weak in my basement.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#13
Funny, every time I asked a mobile carrier sales rep about going pre-paid, they discouraged me. "You'd hate it" they'd say. But I've saved a lot of money since doing so, and with no more mysterious charges on my cellphone bill that no one can account for.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#14
post #7

$65 a month?! shit,that's high! For 1GB od full speed internet, and after that unlimited lowspeed, with morze then enough calls, I pay $7.34 in Poland.

About the same here in France, though the speed is sometimes a bit slow, and I think I got a 4,99€ deal because of a limited time offer. But it´s cheap in any case compared to what you see in North America.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#16

I am tracking my productivity day-by-day. It's generally sloppy, but there were a few outliers where I got done a lot. All these days had one thing in common: I forgot my smartphone at home.

That's my main reason (and battery life) for not having a smartphone. I have the attention span of a gnat and a smartphone would totally wreck my productivity. My general way of dealing with addictive substances is to ban them from my life entirely, that seems to work well so far.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#18

I am tracking my productivity day-by-day. It's generally sloppy, but there were a few outliers where I got done a lot. All these days had one thing in common: I forgot my smartphone at home.

That's my main reason (and battery life) for not having a smartphone. I have the attention span of a gnat and a smartphone would totally wreck my productivity. My general way of dealing with addictive substances is to ban them from my life entirely, that seems to work well so far.

except HN? ;)

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#19
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my main reason (and battery life) for not having a smartphone. I have the attention span of a gnat and a smartphone would totally wreck my productivity. My general way of dealing with addictive substances is to ban them from my life entirely, that seems to work well so far.

except HN? ;)

I really tried, I swear.

Re: Living Without a Cellphone

#20

This is the big reason why I switched to T-Mobile. Yes, the coverage is limited outside of urban and suburban areas. I live in a major city so it works for me. My AT&T Wireless bill had crept up to about $280 and that's with one line "grandfathered" onto their smartphone data block. (AT&T started requiring that smartphones have a data package or be blocked entirely from data if the smartphone was already on the accou…

I'm in a very similar situation that you were in: I'm on Verizon with 3 lines, 1 of them grandfathered into unlimited data. Over several years the monthly bill has crept up to $230-$250.

Since it went up slowly I never thought much about it, until I reviewed last year's finances and realized what had happened.

T-Mobile is looking very enticing.

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