My contract with Sprint is just about up so I'm going to be changing providers and getting a new phone. Two phones, actually - one for me and one for my wife. I need a bit of advice on the following:

1 - What's the best provider? I'm hearing good things about Veriozon and Alltell. Thoughts?

2 - What's a good phone to get? I'm not opposed to spending a bit of money over the freebies I'd get with the new plan, but I don't want to break the bank either. $20-40 extra per phone would be fine. Thoughts?

Gracias in advance.

I think good service has to do with where you live. Around Long Island Verizon and Cingular seem to get the best reception. I went with Cingular because they had the phone I wanted. I have a Sony Ericsson w810i:

After looking at a few Sony phones I was really impressed with there quality plus it's something different from the Razor that everyone has. The w810i has a 2.0 megapixel camera/video camera and acts as a sony walkman (the phone has replaced my Ipod Mini since the battery went down the shitter on it). Right now I only have a 128MB SD card in it but I am going to replace it with a 2GB one soon to hold a lot more songs. Also has an FM radio built into it.

I switched to Verizon about 5 or 6 years ago. At the time their customer service was horrible but coverage was good.

Now I find the coverage even better, and the customer service has been great for me. I highly recommend.

Everyone that I've talked to says Verizon has the best coverage. Since you'd be a new customer you'd get a nice discount on a new phone. Check out Verizon's web site LINK and take a look at the deals new customers can get here.

I would never recommend Cingular (now AT&T) to anyone.

I started out with AT&T Wireless back in '98. I *never* had any problems with it. Loved it.

Then Cingular bought them and it went in the shitter. I don't believe the "fewest dropped calls" at ALL. They have the most coverage of anyone, but the problem is now it's overloaded.

I went with T-Mobile. The Dash phone. I've been very happy with it.

Obviously, others will disagree with me on both Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile has the smallest coverage (though I've not had any problems anywhere I've been with it).

T-Mobile has to have the best prices of the national carriers. I've got the 300 MyFaves plan - $39.99 and the unlimited internet - $29.99.

Here in the midwest it seems like Verizon gets the best coverage. At least in my personal experience it does. I take a 13 hour drive straight north to Canada and everyone else in the car has to use my phone because theirs doesn't get a signal. Not only that, I can get internet on my phone in areas where they can't even get a phone signal.

My friends and I joke that Cingular is named as such because that's how many bars of reception you get.

I can vouch for Verizon customer service because I used them last night. Total wait time to get a person: 20 seconds. She then proceded to credit my account something that shouldn't have been charged, then credited my account again when she noticed I was over my text message limit and upgraded to the next highest package. She even called me back to explain to me how I can check my text usage on my own (already knew it, but a nice touch).

I just bought the XV6700, which is well outside the price range you listed at $200, but I can use it in combination with my slingbox to watch and control my home TV (including DVR and On Demand) on my phone, get real time weather on the screen - including radar (comes in handy while kayaking/fishing), live traffic and directions via a mobile Google maps app and I run a top notch planetarium program that also controls my telescope wirelessly. Oh yeah - it makes calls too.

You can control your DVR from your phone? Sweet! I wonder if I can do that with my Motorola Q? Hmmmm.........
Your phone has Windows Mobile, correct? Any good sites I should bookmark that you may have come across? I have a radio, weather, Nexterra, XOC, ESPN and Yahoo Sports bookmarked so far. Did you know that you could download the old Nintendo emulators and play the games on cell phones with Windows? Pretty cool but, it sucks the battery down in minutes.

I've read about those Nintendo emulators and wanted to give it a try. Even if it was just to get the NES versions of the arcade classics it would be worth the effort.

Any phone with Windows Mobile can be used to watch your home TV in conjunction with Slingbox. Here are the ingredients:

Slingbox Player AV (currently $150 or so)

Slingplayer Mobile for your phone ($30 after free 30 day trial)

Both fees are one time only. No monthly service charges. I've already watched a couple Cubs spring training games thanks to it.

BigE - could you PM me the radio link you use? I'd love to bookmark something like that.

Verizon has been good for me for the past 6 years.

Had Verizon when I worked for them. Loved it, the damn thing just plain worked. Didn't matter where I was. Moved here and switched to cingular, and they sucked. After my year was up, switched to Nextel because the wife had it at work and the free direct connects sounded like a good idea. However, the coverage sucked. Never worked in my office period. Switched to Alltel and I am a happy camper again. The thing I noticed and learned (but never believed) when I worked for Verizon was that the different Network technology matters...Verizon and Alltel are both CDMA, and penetrate buildings well. Cingular\At&T were\are GSM\TDMA and they somewhat penetrate, but don't seem to carry their signal as well. Nextel has it's own iDen and it sucks. Doesn't penetrate at all, and doesn't seem to carry well either. Spring is CDMA, so I would be curious to try their combo Sprint\Nextel DC phone, but I am so happy with Alltel, I don't plan on changing for a very long time.

Except for Ryan Newman. I just don't like him.

After over 10 years with Sprint, I just switched to Verizon and picked up the LG VX8600. Thanks to the help from some of the guys posting in the Basement forum, I've spent the first 2 days goofing around with Audacity, Bitpim , and Bluetooth, to move stuff back-and-forth on the MicroSD card.

I keep wanting to switch from T Mobile to someone that has better coverage... but I keep not doing it because nobody else's minutes-for-the-money even come close.

I get 1000 peak plus unlimited offpeak and weekends for $39.99/month. Everyone else is charging like $69 or $79 for the same deal

I have been very happy with Cingular in the midwest. As for phones, I have had my Razr for a year now and it has a good amount of capabilities when coupled with a usb cable and motorola phone tools software. plus it was only $50 a year ago, its probably free now. There is a reason everyone has it, its a quality phone and its nice and small and thin so it fits well in jean pockets

Verizon is absolutely TERRIBLE where I live.....Cellular One is the only one you get good service, but they recently started charging for incoming texts as well.... I have a RAZR V3 and love it. I would also recommend the new 'Q'

I've had sprint and nextel for 7 years and I've been happy with both.

I build and maintain cell sites for a living and will say sprint and verizon are the best. Verizon has better coverage because they are grandfathered in a lot of places no one else can get now, but sprint has the better technology. Sprint and nextel's foot print is about to double in size so you can look forward to that. Not just because they will be combining soon but because they are starting a serious build project to expand and improve their existing foot print.Verizon isn't expanding now, hence all the commercials. And if you take note that sprint and nextel aren't its because they are saving up for the build. Thats one way of telling who is planning on improving and who isn't.

Been with Cingular since 1994. No issues.

LINK

I can't wait until Adobe's Flash Lite is available so we can watch Youtube videos on our phones!!

Why switch? Unsatisfied with Sprint?

I've not had any issues actually, but I understand they are about the worst company out there. The main thing is that my phone is now a couple of years old and has trouble holding any kind of decent charge, and if I take on a new service agreement I can upgrade both our phones for cheap and switch to a provider that I'm less likely to have trouble with down the road. Plus I can keep the same number.

Right now I'm leaning pretty heavy toward Verizon. I'm still not sure what phone to get, however.

You understand they are the worst company out there, based on what? Have they given you bad customer service, poor coverage? Don't believe everything your read on the internet. Every Cell phone company you have is always going to be the worst one out there, becuase no one ever gets on the web and says what wonderful service I've had with XXYY, the majority of what you read are the bitching, and your going to key off all the complaints about that company and only remember the positives about others. Once you get to that new company, their going to suck after awhile too.

Sprint's agressively trying to reduce churn, there are plenty of deals out there to keep existing customers, look at MineralBlue and the excellent deal he got on his phones, they're are good deals on plans too. If you are smart you can leaverage your existing cell phone provider into a sweetheart deal.

If you find that the service you've received from them sucks, then I would try to switch, it's all radio, which means service is going to depend on your relative location to their cell towers. A different company is going to have towers in a different place.

Agreed. I thought about switching, decided to stay with Sprint, and am still happy with that decision two months later.

Read this thread.

I recently got the same exact phone! I got a 4GB SD card on Buy.com for only $66 bucks (saved $10 bucks since I used Google Checkout). Just got it in the mail today, can't wait to load my phone with songs!

an old phone and hurt you abilty to get a signal big time. New technology at the base station and an old reciever don't go well together. Get a new phone and you'll notice a big difference. Also once you hold on to a phone for 12 months or more sprint will send you a $150 after you buy a new phone.

Update time.

I went ahead and changed to Verizon. I know I could have gotten a similar or slightly better deal with Sprint, but what the hell. I've got pretty much the same plan as before although it is slightly better (no roaming and early evenings for no extra).

I ended up with an LG-VX8600:



My wife wanted this based purely on looks:



Both free. The one my wife picked out doesn't have the best reviews, but hey, it's pink and that's what she wanted.