Hey everybody,
Just the other day my BlackBerry 8100 Pearl's mini USB port became disconnected from the phone so I am no longer able to charge it, making it utter crap. The only thing I did not like about this phone was the fact that you had to pay quite a bit of money to access the internet and to send and receive Images through messages (MMS).
I need some suggestions to phones that allow MMS messaging without paying a hefty fee, as well as a QWERTY keyboard on the phone.
If you know of any phone that can be unlocked that would be great, but for now I am an AT&T/Cingular carrier.
Thank you!
It's not the phone that is the problem, it's the carrier. Verizon is generally considered to be the king of nickel and diming you to death. Just about every feature requires you to pay some small fee. Same basic deal with Blackberry phones.
So what you need, is a phone that's capable of doing all these things, and then a service plan with your carrier that is acceptable. I only really have experience with Verizon, but I know for about $150/mo, I can get a service plan that has unlimited minutes and unlimited data. I assume that other carriers have been forced to develop a similar plan, so just figure out what AT&T/Cingular offers.
I looked into getting the Pearl or the HTC Touch with alltel but decided against it. The "smartphone plans" are more expensive (with less minutes), plus its $20 (instead of $10) to add lines in which me and my wife each have a line plus a 3rd line we use for internet (no dsl in the country) and I would not get my discount through my employer. After figuring it up I think it was going to be around $50 a month more for me to have a "smartphone" which I just can't justify spending to have one.
I ended up getting the LG Glimmer which has pretty much all the options of a smartphone without the extra price. I still don't have the full "html" internet on it, but i can check the news, sports, weather which I like being able to do. I can even stream videos on youtube (at broadband speeds) and my co-worker who has the HTC PPC6800 which is a smartphone can't go to you tube or watch videos that are mms'd to him.
If you want to stay with AT&T, that's fine. To me, it's either AT&T or T-Mobile that would give you SMS/MMS without issues. Sprint usually nickel and dime, and Verizon pretty much locks you out on their respective services. Anyways, you got lots of AT&T cell options...
You can use either:
Motorola Q9H
Samsung Blackjack I or II
AT&T Tilt
Palm Treo 750 (WM6) or the 680 (Palm)
Pantech Duo
Or go with the usual BlackBerry Pearl and Curve.
I know that you are already aware of the RIM services, so I will not get into that.
However, you still need to pay a nice little fee if you want unlimited data connection through the internet, but with the unlimited text messaging, that will cover both SMS and MMS on the other smartphones mentioned. You can go for the regular cell phones as well, but you pretty much need a smartphone if you want the QWERTY keyboard option. Not sure about the data plans, as their are several options, ranging around $30, the unlimited SMS/MMS is $20.
I hope that this helps and good luck.
| Forum legend: | |
| Locked thread | |
| Moderator | |
![]() |
CNET staff |
![]() |
Samsung staff |
| Norton Authorized Support team | |
| AVG staff | |
| Windows Outreach team | |
![]() |
Dell staff |
| Intel staff | |