Smartphone talk

[jasonfish11]

You mean SD card?... for expandable memory

Yeah thats it.

I'm terrible with tech stuff (unless it is MS Excel upgrades).

I was just thinking... if you can access your sd card - can't you upgrade it to whatever size they make sd cards?

I was told no by the guy at verizon when I asked the same thing. Because my wife always uses up more space than she has, and the phone she was looking at had an additional 64 gig SD card slot.

But 1 answer from a random verizon guy doesn't mean that is true, and it could vary by phone.

[jasonfish11]

I've been a couple months past my "update" month.

I dropped my phone today and cracked the screen. Guess I'll upgrade this weekend

[Coda1850]

I've been a couple months past my "update" month.

I dropped my phone today and cracked the screen. Guess I'll upgrade this weekend

Whatcha gonna get?

[jasonfish11]

Probably a Droid Turbo 2. "unbreakable" screen + 2 TB SD card. Also I currently have a Droid Ultra so I wont have to relearn anything.

[legitimatebeef]

I kind of envy you non-apple people. Seems like you enjoy a lot more freedom and choice. Not like I am a hardcore Apple person or anything. You just get set in your ways. Then one day you find yourself screaming at the computer, unable to do something as simple as transfer your music mp3s to your iphone.

[Duke of Hazards]

What is with these massive SD cards?

This is 2016. You don't need to be a digital hoarder. Shoot it up in the cloud and it's there whenever you need it. For me, 16gb is plenty. Photos, video and music get sent to the cloud, dumped locally. Everything streams. Dump apps you never use.

(unless you're a tin hat wearer and have your cash stuffed in a mattress, then the cloud is probably not your friend)

[jfurr]

Beef - I actually had to call iTunes support because the settings to manually copy were vanished from the stupid iTunes application. Turns out had to do with iCloud matching or done shit I don't use. That program used to be awesome now it us so confusing.

Duke - I like having my favorite content on the device so j don't need to stream using data all the time. Plus folks like beef who don't get cell service on long subway rides need the content locally.

[Duke of Hazards]

Yeah, that makes sense. I forgot about the data limits on some plans.

[Coda1850]

A different take on storage.

[legitimatebeef]

Beef - I actually had to call iTunes support because the settings to manually copy were vanished from the stupid iTunes application. Turns out had to do with iCloud matching or done shit I don't use. That program used to be awesome now it us so confusing.

Duke - I like having my favorite content on the device so j don't need to stream using data all the time. Plus folks like beef who don't get cell service on long subway rides need the content locally.

I don't get any connectivity whatsoever from the time I enter my apartment building until I'm inside my home. In all the common areas of the building you cannot get so much as an analog cellular signal. That means no texting or internet during the long elevator ride up, ever. Also means no pandora radio while I'm doing laundry, getting the mail or throwing out the recycling. This way of life, it's not for everybody.

[Duke of Hazards]

Beef - I actually had to call iTunes support because the settings to manually copy were vanished from the stupid iTunes application. Turns out had to do with iCloud matching or done shit I don't use. That program used to be awesome now it us so confusing.

Duke - I like having my favorite content on the device so j don't need to stream using data all the time. Plus folks like beef who don't get cell service on long subway rides need the content locally.

I don't get any connectivity whatsoever from the time I enter my apartment building until I'm inside my home. In all the common areas of the building you cannot get so much as an analog cellular signal. That means no texting or internet during the long elevator ride up, ever. Also means no pandora radio while I'm doing laundry, getting the mail or throwing out the recycling. This way of life, it's not for everybody.

That's different than what I thought. For some reason, I have this belief that all large metro areas are saturated with thick layers of high speed cell signal. I guess old plaster walls and other stuff makes it hard for signal to penetrate, although with each iteration of technology, seems like it becomes better at doing just that.

[Duke of Hazards]

S7 edge. My hand is glad to be rid of the wide body Nexus 6, was never truly comfortable.

This thing is locked down, though. No root access to delete unwanted bloatware. So be it.

[jfurr]

Writing from the waiting area at the cell phone store. Went in to get a new phone for my wife. Was really surprised to find that they make you pay full price for smartphones now. For years we just wait until the end of the contract, then get a new phone for the discount price with another 2 year agreement. So now apparently they don't have contracts and you either pay fur the phone outright or in monthly installments. I don't get it.

[sjduffers]

They used to make you pay for it with higher monthly payments for at least 2 years. Do you think a device as sophisticated as a smartphone ever costed $50 or whatever they were charging for the phone? No, it was subsidized by the phone companies which were making it back in higher monthly fees, and you also had no choice. Besides, you always paid the sales tax on the full amount of the phone, not the susbsidized price.

Now, you have your choice of paying upfront or with installments, but those installments are no longer burried in the monthly network charge and effectively it stops after the 2 years, whereas before, the inflated contracted monthly fee kept going, even after 2 years had elapsed, if you didn't change/renew/stop the contract...

So, it's all better now.

[jfurr]

I understand that we always were paying for it buried in the charges, what I don't I understand then is why isn't my monthly bill lowered? Same charges plus went up another ~20 bucks for the phone payments.

[jfurr]

Here is something else about this deal I don't understand.

For the privilege of buying this new phone, I (or I should say she, this is my wife's deal), has to pay $20.

And in a couple years, when we are done paying for the phone and want to upgrade again, we HAVE TO trade-in the phone we paid for in full, plus pay another $20 AND start paying for another phone at full price.

What value am I getting in return for trading in? None.

[sjduffers]

You don't have to trade in. Once the phone is fully paid, it's yours, in perpetuity. However, to keep up with technology, you get back on the bandwaggon, but you dont't have to trade in if fully paid up. You can sell on Craiglist or similar after getting the phone unlocked by your carrier, if needed. Might get a one or two hundred bucks for it...

[jfurr]

That would certainly make sense to me but I read the lengthy terms of the plan and there is a lengthy discussion of how to upgrade by trading in your device in good working condition. I'll look at it again. I prefer to keep the old one as a back up.

By my calculation this new way costs us an additional $450 over 24 months versus the old way. Not including the upgrade fee and potential trade in loss.

Now if they would lower our monthly rates by same amount over 24 months so it came out the same then I would have no complaint. It took me two days to explain this to my wife.

Thanks for letting me rant.

[sjduffers]

Don't forget that it's also possible to return a phone that has not been fully paid for in order to have it upgraded (and start another 2 years cycle), so that complicates things.

I don't know why your monthly bill has increased by $20, unless you started this all over with a new phone while you still had one under contract using the older subsidy model. As i said, the new model is more transparent and takes the carrier away from subsidies, like has been the case for a long time in other countries.

The US model of subsidies was invented as a way of providing high-cost devices to users who couldn't afford them, even before smartphones, but rather than calling that for what it is (using credit), the carriers were allowed to gouge the customers by continuing to charge them the higher monthly bill, even after the 2 years contract had expired, despite charging for a high termination fee of the contract, a fee meant to cover the remaining unpaid cost of the device...

It's all better now, but you'd have to sort out the particulars of your monthly bill not having gone down, or having gone up another $20. Good luck!

[Duke of Hazards]

Yeah, with the new model, the 'base' phone plans have dropped (at least in my case and with my carrier, T-mobile).

Everything is modular. Base plan, then add the phone (retail price / 24 months). The 'base plan' is cheaper then it was several years ago with the subsidized plans, and includes more (unlimited min/texts/data in my case).

I'm guessing that the 'trade-in' thing basically is telling you that if you return the device during the 2-yr cycle, it will relieve you of paying the balance on the installment plan. In my own experience, these devices in the first year more or less depreciate at the rate at which you're paying. In other words, if you opt for a $600 device on day one and are paying monthly installments, after 12 months (mid-way through a 2 year payment plan), the device's street value is roughly half (to be fair, it's probably still worth a little more .. maybe $350), but when you consider the inconvenience of having to list/sell and ship it, I'd rather eat the $50 and move on.

The rate of depreciation slows considerably after a year, so if you tend to keep your phones a long time and/or want to keep it as a backup, you're better off paying through 24 months and keeping it, since after a full 2 years, it's likely to still be worth about 25-35% of the original price.

Obviously, some people lean more towards always having a newer device and others don't mind having a paid off phone and upgrading on a 4-5 year cycle.

[jfurr]

Yeah - I get all that but (using round numbers here for example)

The plan is $100/month

We go in to upgrade

Purchase phone w/payments over 24 months ~ $20 per month.

New monthly payment $120/mo

[Duke of Hazards]

That sounds about right. So what's the problem?

[jfurr]

Problem is that I'm still paying the "higher" monthly plan rates.

Since they aren't covering the phone costs in the plan anymore that $100/mo plan should have dropped to $80.

Does anyone besides me understand what I'm saying?

[sjduffers]

Are you saying you turned in a phone for which the contract was up (more than 2 years) on which you were paying $100 month and replaced it with a new one and now you are paying $120 a month for the next 2 years, and not just for one month (eg upgrade fee)? If the 2 years was not up yet on the original phone, it can get more complicated...

[jfurr]

Are you saying you turned in a phone for which the contract was up (more than 2 years) on which you were paying $100 month and replaced it with a new one and now you are paying $120 a month for the next 2 years, and not just for one month (eg upgrade fee)?

Kinda, yes. I didn't "turn in" any phone, I kept the phone we bought over 2 years ago. But we got a new phone under this new plan scheme and now our monthly payment is the same plus the $20 hardware charge on top for the next 24 months.

And regarding setup fees - I had to pay full sales tax on this new phone on day of delivery (about ~48 bucks) plus the added "upgrade charges" etc will roll into my next month's payment which will total be about $170.

SO -- to me I'm getting nothing more but paying higher cost.