You could always just stay 1 generation behind and buy used phones off Swappa.com, the HTC One (m7) is going for between $175-350 right now, and the M8 really isn't that much better than it.
So you really gonna mention free meals, and not where to get them
Aight, breh. But you gotta understand. I feel I've dropped some frugal man's gems on this board that are rarely appreciated. And it's not even on some "they not dappin me
" shyt but it's more like "why bother?"
You see, I'm very passionate when it comes to beating systems and getting over. So I can talk about it forever. But that takes time.
I gotta give a lil background info so heads can understand why I did what I did. I used to be with Verizon. Unlimited data
. Loved the service. Loved it even more because I worked for Home Depot back in 06. I got a nice discount through them and even when I left a year later, the discount stayed intact. So when I switched over to smart phones (Blackberry) my bill was only $80 a month for unlimited. Only 450 minutes but free VZW to VZW plus 5 "family and friends." Worked out cool for me because my girl (now wife), parents and best friend all had VZW too. Plus my 5 extra numbers, minutes was never an issue.
Back to the unlimited. Back then I wasn't making much money so I had to learn to keep my bills as low as possible. That's why I am the way I am now. Cut cable way back then and never looked back
. Anyways I used that unlimited data as my internet connection too by tethering. Side note, I paid $50 for a tethering app and ended up getting 2 licenses (threw one on my wife's BB) and an extra $30 worth of apps. Even though I could get most apps for free, the one license alone would have been money well spent IMO.
So I used that data to download movies, stream sports from firstrow, everything. 1 bill, $80, all entertainment/phone covered.
Fast forward to 2012, I have a steady income but sticking to my same frugal ways which I've learned to live off of. Again, I don't fall into your "retarded American" category because I held onto my 2nd BlackBerry, the Storm 2, for hella long. Contract been expired. Still using it as both my phone and my internet connection. But I ended up having to get cable internet for other reasons so the tethering was no longer as vital. One time I'm outta town and my old ass BB started acting up so I thought it was just that time. Most people would have been sent it to
Gardens but I'm not like most nikkas and was still getting mad use out of it, more than most people were getting out of brand new phones.
Anyways, I'm not in my town, I had no phone and more importantly no GPS. So I went to Verizon, bit the bullet and re-upped for 2 years, copping an iPhone 4s. This was shortly after the 5 dropped so it was cheap. First thing ole boy at VZW does is look at my data usage and hits me with the
. "You know you're gonna have to give up your unlimited data right?"
I wasn't sweating it because I recently got the cable connection so I no longer needed my phone for home internet. I know nikkas who tethered about 5 gigs a month and were scared to go over. I was 100 gigs or more every month. Unlimited means unlimited.
So I went from unlimited to 2 gigs a month.
When I got back to the crib, ended up ordering a new battery for the Berry and it was like new.
The funny thing is, I actually preferred the BB to the iPhone. So I used that as my primary phone.
Got to playing with the iPhone and figured out I could use pretty much all the features over wifi except calling. BUT there was VOIP through a google voice client. Now we're getting into the info you seek.....
I had long been using my google voice number as a secondary number. When people would call it, my main phone would ring. Now I had the iPhone ringing as well and if I was home I would answer that so not to use up any minutes. As I said, minutes were never an issue but at that point I was using maybe 5 minutes a month, if that. I was either using VZW to VZW, Friends& Fam or they were getting the GV number.
And if I was away from wifi, my main phone would ring as well so I never missed a call.
Then one day VZW sent me an email asking me to re-verify my employment status with Home Depot.
Now I had been getting this discount for YEARS without them ever asking me about it but I guess they realized half their discounted customers were probably ineligible. Now even to this day I can log into Home Depot's employee website and pull up my old pay stubs. They're in PDF form and can easily be edited to reflect a more recent date. Now it's one thing for them to never ask me, but it's another to falsify documents to get the discount. I wasn't bout that life
so I said fukk it and let the discount lapse.
Man my bill shot up to $115
So I went from $80 for unlimited data to $115 for 2 fukkin gigs. As I think back, I prolly shoulda tried to switch to a non data plan but I decided to say "fukk you."
it was the principle of it all for me.
I never woulda re-upped at that price. Woulda bought the phone outright which I maybe should have done anyway. But everything happens for a reason.
I paid the $115 for a couple months but I kept exploring my options because I wasn't happy about my new terms. I knew I could make calls, send texts, iMessages and everything else over wifi but I didn't have access everywhere. My internet provider does have hot spots all over the city which is cool though. Sometimes I walk to one of the parks near me and watch football on Sunday afternoons.
But I needed to stay connected always.
Googled "free internet" or something and found out about a much clowned service called Freedom Pop. Freedom Pop was basically an old service called Clear whose motto was internet everywhere. It runs on Sprint's 4G network which doesn't cover everywhere but where it's good, it's great. Come to find out, I live in one of those great places.
Anyways, if you get mobile hot spot, Freedom Pop offers half a gig of free data per month. The GV client I use uses about half a MB of data per minute for VOIP. So essentially, I was looking at around 1,000 minutes of talk time while not connected to home or any other wifi connection. I run a home business so I spend most of my time and make most of my calls from the crib anyway or I'm somewhere else that has wifi. That's MORE than enough data to make whatever calls I need to make while on the go.
Phone is jailbroken so my GV SMS integrates seamlessly with the native message app.
Google did threaten to kill off 3rd party apps but there was still Hangouts, and apple users could make VOIP calls on Hangouts since day 1. But google never actually shut anything down. The app I once used pretty much switched up their service preemptively, so I had to find a new one but no hiccup.
I went from my phone being my internet service to my internet being my phone service. Total cost went from $80 to $60.
60 bucks. Internet. TV. Movies. HD sports. Phone.
And that is the long story of how I completely eliminated my cell phone service.
If nikkas want my secrets they gotta feel my pain.
In the midst of all that I did switch to an iPhone 5s though.
But it was more about storage. I had a 16 GB 4s and upped to a 32 GB 5s. Bought it used off eBay. Sue me.
