Tuesday, October 27, 2009

IPhone on Pay As You Go!!!


Well, let me start by saying, in my opinion, the IPhone is the most impressive piece of technology that has ever been made. It is simply that great.

I have my email synced, my calendar synced, I have a crap load of free games on it, I have a bunch of utilities on it, oh and by the way, it is a phone.

I will talk about how great the IPhone is later (and trust me, it is GREAT)....but I wanted to tell my story of buying the IPhone and putting it on Pay As You Go and the features that you get and dont get.....

Step 1 -I bought my IPhone from a dude off of Kijiji. He had paid $699 6 months ago and bought the phone outright so he had no contract. He switched to a BlackBerry Storm. I paid $260 for the Iphone itself (came with charger, all manuals, original box, screen protector, and not a scratch on it....it was in MINT shape)

Step 2 - Went to Futureshop and bought a Rogers Sim card....It was $40 which felt like a ripoff but not much I could do. (I hear you can buy a brand new Rogers Sim card on ebay for about $15 but I couldnt wait to start using my IPhone....therefore I paid the $40 to Futureshop to get the SIM in my hands right then!)

Step 3 - Went online to Rogers Wireless and activated my SIM card on Rogers Pay As You Go. I choose the $20 a month option which gets you a 31 cent a minute rate (I think) and text messages are 15 cents a text message. Your unused minutes (or $ depending how you look at it) rolls over to the NEXT month.
HERES A GOOD THING TO KNOW - If you ever want to switch to a NON Pay As You Go plan, your PAYG Balance will be a CREDIT on your monthly bill. You can switch between a PAYG and a monthly plan at any time and you can switch back and forth as much as you want or need to.

OK so now I have a WORKING IPhone for $300 total and I am NOT locked to any Rogers Plan for ANY length of time. This is freekin sweet and exactly what I wanted.

I honestly do NOT see any reason why I (the key word here is I, meaning ME) am going to need a data plan, and I see NO reason for myself to switch from Pay As You Go. I basically have FREE WIRELESS everywhere (home, work, etc) therefore I can download apps, browse the internet, get sports scores, use google maps and the GPS, etc etc where ever I am by "piggybacking" on those FREE WIFI spots. It works SUPER!!!!

The drawback of Pay As You Go is that:
1) IPhone GPS will NOT work unless you are on a WIFI network (because you have no dataplan). Technically you can have the MAP loaded to where you are going from and to and that works great. But your GPS will not show you EXACTLY where you are. For me that is fine.....If I really need a GPS I will buy a Tom Tom for $150 instead of adding $25 to my cell bill month after month. Or, alternatively, if I know I am going to Vegas in a few months I could change my cell plan and put the data option for my plan for that month, then change back to Pay As You Go.

2) Visual Voicemail does NOT work on Pay As You Go....honestly I dont know what Visual Voicemail is, so I am not heartbroken that I dont get it.

3) No Data Plan means NO Internet unless connected to WIFI - this could be a killer for some people....I myself never used to use the browser on my phone, therefore again, this is no big deal to me.

Please keep in mind I am NOT at all a Hardcore phone user.....That is why Pay As You Go works just freekin sweet for me. Many people already think I am retarded for doing this, but honestly it works for me and that is all that matters.

Couple of things I should mention with Pay As You Go
-your unused minutes ($) gets rolled over to the next month
-you get free number display (and if that person is in your contacts it will bring up their name obiously that is the Phone doing that part)
-you have the option of putting voicemail on your line (for free)
-they do have a variety of Pay As You Go plans that you should check out if you are interested in doing this

Anyway that is my story of the IPhone on Pay As You Go....It works for me....and I am in LOVE with my IPhone.....Theres probably an app for that :-)

D-Out

6 comments:

3treescreations@gmail.com said...

It's true - he does love his IPhone.

Andrew McKinlay said...

Even if you have a data plan with Rogers, the roaming charges outside Canada are brutal. So getting a data plan for a trip to Vegas probably wouldn't be reasonable. Unless you could buy a US sim card with a US data plan. But that wouldn't work if the phone is locked to Rogers.

Lynne said...

Wow Derek, that's a lot of info for me to absorb! How do you figure it all out? I'm so happy that you love your Iphone. Congrats!

Derek said...

Very good point Andrew!! Thanks for that tip!!! I think I will just buy a Tom Tom for my GPS Solution.

Lynne said...

It's awesome to have Andrew's knowledgeable input, and interest in your blog. Have a good day!

Lynne said...

Hey Derek, how is your total doughnut blog money doing? It's been a month since your last post. Perhaps you can give us an update. Wishing you well!