Got a New Phone

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Samsung Galaxy Prevail Android OS: Gingerbread V2.3.5
Boost Mobile I have the unlimited plan

Nice. I'd like to get the iPhone 5 as soon as it's out.

I never wanted a Iphone. I prefer Android the iphone platform is to locked down for me I like openess

AppStore has more apps though, and they are less likely to contain viruses. But yes, if you like open platforms android is the best choice

I've been rocking my Captivate for over a year now and love it. There is a website called xda-developers that might help you with hacking the crap out of your phone.

Should have gone for a Galaxy S II or Galaxy Nexus or even a Nexus S in all honesty. That one looks a bit cheap and low-end. If you're gonna go for an Android phone, you might as well get the most powerful one you can.

@Asp-Z: You're forgetting... a brand new Evo3D/Photon/SGS2 purchased from Sprint to use with Boost/Virgin/MetroPCS isn't going to cost $99-199, it's going to cost around $600. At that point, you might as well just sign a 2-year contract with Sprint and save $400 on the phone. (FYI, Boost is a MVNO that rides on Sprint's network, and only phones sold by Sprint can generally be hacked & repurposed to work on it).

Also, getting Sprint Android phones to work on Boost/Virgin/Metro isn't impossible, but it's not necessarily *easy*, and due to the cost-insanity of buying a brand new unsubsidized Sprint phone to use elsewhere, nobody really bothers until everyone who bought a phone when it was new hits their anniversary upgrade date & last year's best-of-breed phones hit eBay in large quantities.

The fact that Sprint eliminated annual upgrades also means that the supply of cheap 12 month old best-of-breed (last year) phones is going to start drying up a bit going forward. Realistically, the 3vo, MoPho, and SGS2 are likely to be the last batch of 12 month old Sprint phones to hit ebay at fire-sale prices.

Anway, congrats to Markitzero -- you're going to love it

Last edited by dr01dguy on 05 Jan 2012, 9:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.

android for the win. I am an android game developer, and I think you made a great decision with going with android.

I've got the Galaxy S II and it's a great phone. My bro's got it rooted an it's clocked to 1.6. Fantastic screen, vibrant colours, more functions than I'll ever use and it replaces my PC when I'm on the move! My bro's into phones and he recommended it to me, if you are going for Android (I would never chose the restricted Apple personally) then this is currently the best phone to go for. I asked my bro about the Nexus and he laughed at me; yes it has ICS and the screen resolution is 720 but that's all it seems to have going for it, the rest of the technology seems to pale in comparison to the GS II.

Meh, I buy all my phones unlocked and use pay as you go sims in them. Best way to go about it really, especially when you upgrade as often as I do (every few months)

@Asp-Z: I'm not 100% sure, but I've gotten the impression somewhere along the line that you're in the UK (please correct me if I'm wrong). In the US, that strategy doesn't really work. There's only one prepay GSM carrier, and from what I've read, if you use typical Android amounts of data, it ends up being more expensive than Sprint or T-Mobile & really only makes sense if you're visiting from Europe for a few months and need a solution that's cheaper than roaming.

Also, in the US, there's basically no cost savings to buying unsubsidized phones. T-Mobile is the only carrier that offers discounts to customers who sign a contract & bring their own phone, and as a practical matter, American cellular networks are like Japan's -- each one, even the nominally-GSM ones, find creative ways to be slightly incompatible with each other in ways that ultimately mean that using phones from a different network will either not work at all, won't be able to work at the highest possible data speeds, and/or will require enormous amounts of hacking effort to get it to work.

Most "world" phones still can't do HSPA+ on T-Mobile's frequencies. No hard technical reason -- the chipsets themselves are now almost universally capable of it. The phone mfrs. themselves just don't bother to enable support for it unless they explicitly plan to sell the phones to T-Mobile in the US. AFAIK, the US is the only country (possibly Canada, too) that uses 1700/2100.

Most "world" phones can't do 850MHz HSUPA on AT&T & have to limp along with slower basic-rate UMTS at 1900MHz (AFAIK, only Canadian and Australian phones natively do 850, and Australian phones intended for Telstra are *insanely* expensive when imported to the US).

Sprint phones can be hacked to work on Verizon, but they can't do EVDO unless the phone has a Verizon-branded "identical twin" that's literally identical down to the last transistor & can have its radio modem JTAG-reflashed to the Verizon firmware. In any case, the phone wouldn't be able to do 4G, even if by some miracle of ${deity} the phone had a wimax radio, because there's no way to get an "alien" wimax radio provisioned with certificate for Sprint-Clearwire operation. They literally have no business process for doing it, and lots of guys at XDA who accidentally wiped their certs while trying to crack the bootloaders found out the hard way that the only way to ever get 4G back after this happens is to run over the phone with a car & do a $100 insurance replacement.

Verizon phones can't work at all on Sprint unless you break some major federal laws and clone the MEID of an old Sprint phone to the new Verizon phone, because Sprint's network refuses to allow the provisioning of any phone whose MEID isn't in their holy database of Sprint-branded phones (no technical reason, they just refuse to do it; Even if they did, Verizon phones on Sprint would have the same problem as Sprint phones on Verizon -- they'd be limited to 153kbit/sec 1xRTT data, and wouldn't be able to negotiate EVDO with the tower due to reasons that are too technical to go into here, but are entirely caused by software-imposed limits). Like AT&T, Verizon's LTE is totally incompatible with everyone else on earth, so an alien phone on Verizon wouldn't be able to do 4G, either.

If you haven't guessed, mobile networks are one of my "special interests"

Yes, I am in the UK, and I think you're right: what I do isn't really cost-effective in the US. Damn I'm lucky I don't have to put up with the crap you get on your phone deals! You have to pay for phones even on contract, then pay stupid rates for data, then pay for incoming calls and texts! It's like some big practical joke...

Over here you can get basically any smartphone free on contract (the only real exception being the iPhone) for around £35 a month for a high end Android phone with a plan including approximately 500 minutes, 500 texts, and 1GB data. And remember, the phone itself is free.

If you go any normal network for a SIM only contract, it'll be a one month rolling deal (so there's no commitment) and you get far better deals.

What I do, though, puts all those deals to shame and spits in their face. Because I get a pay as you go SIM which gives me 250 minutes, unlimited texts, and unlimited internet (with no fair use policy) for £10 a month. And they pay me more than I pay for my service when I use their forums to help other customers and get other people signed up to the network, so in effect I make a profit every single month from my network. I'll also note, for the nerds, that they support jailbreaking, rooting, custom ROMs, and unlocking, and they even post guides on their official site to help their users out with such things.

Damn it feels good to not have to use American phone networks