This blog is supposed to be dedicated to my life and career in relation to technology, but my first post is going to be about my new Samsung Galaxy Prevail smart-phone from Boost Mobile.
First let me say that I have never owned a smart-phone before. I have an iPod Touch and I've played with a lot of other folks smartphones but this is my first experience living with one as my primary phone. Overall I have to say that I am pleased, but that may be only because I haven't been spoiled by some of the higher end smart phones on faster networks.
The Galaxy Prevail is small, I can actually fit it in the "third pocket" of my jeans, its roughly the same size as my ipod touch and nearly twice as thick. The screen is bright and clear and it has all of the features a smart phone is supposed to have, wifi, gps, G3, a memory card reader, bluetooth and Andriod 2.2 which runs very adequately on the 800mhz processor.
I am cheap so the monthly cost is important to me. The $50 a month plan includes everything- and I mean everything unlimited. There are no hidden fees, charges, taxes, blah blah blah. $50= $50= $50 per month unlimited. I REALLY like that, and if I pay on time for six months it goes down to $45/month, I pay on time for a year it goes down to $40 and so on till it reaches $35 a month for unlimited everything. This is the best possible deal you can get as far as I know. Like I said: I am cheap.
There are downsides:
1. Customer service sucks. You have to search the internet for the right sequence of keys to press to talk to a human.
2. The bluetooth tends to spike the CPU usage on the phone to 100% when used for more than half and hour or so- a reboot of the phone is required to fix the problem. This might be a firmware issue that will be fixed later..
3. The service is spotty. Whether this is the fault of the phone or the carrier (which I believe is actually Sprint in disguise) I cannot say. I suspect the phone is not the best at picking up signals and/or Sprint prioritizes it's contract customers over the prepaid losers like me.
That said the phone works for my purposes. In the city I never lose a signal and near freeways it works just fine. The data rate can be slow (256 down 128 up in one test) but I don't use it for anything but quick email checks and streaming Pandora Radio which works just fine. Texting seems to go through in a reasonable amount of time, they always go through within a minute usually faster.
The phone itself is $170 but there are no contracts so if you hate the service you can sell the phone on ebay right quick I reckon. I actually would recommend this phone for other cheap bastards like me who need a gadget fix and a phone to use in the city. If you are worried about getting service when your car breaks down in them middle of nowhere, you should probably pick something else, or buy a signal booster for your car, which I am considering myself in case I get stranded.
Overall the Samsung Galaxy Prevail offers a good value for my purposes.
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