Verizon FINALLY Confirms DROID 2, R2-D2 Droid

[mdillenbeck]

[citation][nom]mrecio[/nom]Its a 3G hotspot so for 20$ a month you can share your phones 3G connection with other devices . . . What do you guys recommend Verizon or sprint? people tell me sprint coverage sucks but I live in 1 of two cities in CA with 4G so i think coverage would be good right?[/citation]

First, $20 for 5 phones with a 2 GB/month data cap on the wifi hotspot (on-phone data usage is still unlimited I believe). I pay $30 to tether for 5 GB/month, so it is a hidden cost increase from $6/GB to $10/GB.

Second, for you I would seriously recommend Sprint. Look at the plans and costs/limits:

Verizon you can get $59.99 for 450 minutes talk, nights and weekends start at 9pm, and unlimited text. If you go with a smartphone, you must get at least a $29.99 unlimited data plan. If you want to use it as a hotspot, then you pay the $20.00 per month to get 5 devices with a 2 GB/mo limit. Total cost before any other extras and fees is $109.98

Sprint you can get a $69.99 plan with 450 minutes of talk (pay $5 to get unlimited to your home number), nights and weekends start at 7pm (or +$5.00 to start at 6pm), unlimited text, and unlimited data (which I hear you can hook in with google voice to bypass using your minutes by using data instead). For the EVO you have a $10 premium tacked on, but you are in a 4G area so you will be able to use its front face camera while making a call. Finally, for $29.99 you can add a hotspot for 8 devices that use whatever data plan you have - in other words, unlimited data for the hotspot. Total cost for Sprint is $109.98.

Analysis: EVO vs all Verizon Smartphones - Sprint starts unlimited call times 2 hours earlier, gives you 4G access (which you said you have in your area), doesn't cap your data when using it as a hotspot, and allows up to 3 more devices when using it as a hotspot. Any other smart phone from Sprint will save you $10 per month but I don't know if there are any other 4G phones out yet. My verdict, try Sprint for a few weeks and make sure you are getting acceptable signals in the areas you go to.

If you travel a lot, then take a little vacation with the phone (a driving tour) to test it out. I find Verizon is much better at holding at least voice calls in more rural areas than Sprint (and AT&T lacks 3G coverage between most urban areas except in the northeast). If you can't keep a voice signal, either get Verizon or get a pay-as-you-go Verizon phone as backup and buy minutes only when you travel.

 

[Guest]

Timeless advice from someone who has spent millions of dollars on tech the last two decades:

Go with the device manufacturers that spend the most on R&D and have the best engineers. These are the American companies like Motorola, Apple, HP, and Cisco and they have the most innovative products and patents (but increasingly their VP's are moving jobs overseas even though the educated ones generally migrate to the US). The best phones right now are the iPhones and the Droids.

If you want good coverage, and especially if your work will pay for your smartphone, go with the carriers that spend the most money building their networks and who own the most licensed spectrum, which is Verizon & AT&T. No other carriers come close to the spectrum and tower coverage of these two companies. Verizon is ahead of everyone with the network and they will be the first to launch the largest 4G LGE network, that is why they charge the most. AT&T is building their network faster than anyone else and with all the unused spectrum they own their network will catch up to Verizon when everything is upgraded from GSM to LTE in a couple of years.

If you are on a budget and don't travel much, just go with a cheap phone & plan from the smaller carriers Sprint or T-Mobile and save some money. Eventually in the end everything will be LTE and all the carriers will have roaming agreements and all the consumers won't know or won't care who owns what, everything will just work just about everywhere. That is still several few years out.

Since most people spend the majority of time at home & work, the most important thing with a smartphone is to install a Cisco/Linksys WiFi router on your DSL or cable in your home and make sure your IT department installs a Cisco WiFi throughout your work. Use the WiFi radio in these areas and you will have excellent coverage the majority of time.

Do not buy anything that says "Dell" or "BlackBerry" or any foreign name you do not recognize. These companies do not invest in R&D so after their Chinese suppliers figure out how to design and manufacture the products to spec, their products are already out of date by the time the first shipment of containers are unloaded 6-12 months later, and you will be disapppointed with the poor quality and lack of support when your equipment fails.

Don't blame the US wireless carriers for poor coverage. The regional telecoms/Bell companies & AT&T had almost the entire US covered with a dual A - B analog system under the old rules until the FCC f-uped the whole US spectrum by chopping it up into hundreds of tiny pieces and trying to make it accessible to hundreds of different carriers in a failed attempt of "competition" under the new digital spectrum. Coverage went from 20 miles per tower (analog) down to a few miles (digital) and the FCC forced the carriers to unplug the analog network too quickly. Every other country but the US knows there is only enough available spectrum to allow just a few national carriers. So in the end the US carriers fixed the problem by merging dozens of cellular companies to create two large national carriers and two smaller national carriers.