It was almost a year ago when I published a breathlessly raving review of the hottest cell phone you need to own RIGHT NOW, the Nokia 2600. I received this cell phone as a hand-me-down over ten years ago. It could make and receive phone calls, send rudimentary text messages, and even had games like Bounce and Millenium Mission. And the best part was, the cost came out to only about $5 a month. I used it a handful of times each year.
Logically, I came to the conclusion that this Nokia 2600 was the only cell phone anyone ever needed. So it may surprise you to learn that, only a few months later…
Hell was freezing. Pigs were flying. And I bought a new cell phone.
Holy moley! After writing a jokey review and then an honest defense of my 11 year old cell phone, I bet the last thing you thought I’d do is upgrade. Me too. But things change. People change.
Let’s take a moment to remember the good times. Please, play this video and take a look back with me at some of the Nokia 2600’s finest moments. I can’t believe these days are over.
Anyway, the reason I had to get a new phone is that people want to text me. I’ve resisted the move to texting until now, because now we have tenants. And though my old phone was perfectly fine at receiving texts, it was crap at sending them. In fact, it couldn’t reliably send a text unless it was in reply to a message already received. So I decided for the good of my tenants and the quality of my landlording, I had to make a huge upgrade.
I spent $40 dollars to buy a new phone on eBay
This is technically the first cell phone I’ve ever bought, since my earlier one was inherited. Look, a real smartphone!
It’s a Moto E. The entire glass front is a screen and it works by using your finger to select things. Technology! Aside from making calls and sending texts, it can basically do everything a computer can do. You can get directions, look up restaurant reviews and see the score of your favorite sports team! Sports!
Want to see what I use it for? Let’s turn it on and see a portrait of an inept smartphone user:
I only have the pre-loaded apps, plus Yelp, Lyft (which I only downloaded so I could get an account credit), and bookmarks for the CDTA webpage which tells me when my bus will arrive, and the NOAA weather website. And apparently I have two clocks. I don’t know how that happened.
If you’re curious, this is the same phone model that Marge uses. We are Tracfone twins!
How much does our cell phone plan cost?
With all of this added usability, there must be an increase in cost. Look at all the things I can do! So even though these phones only cost $40 each, there must be a huge monthly fee and a big contract, right? Isn’t that what most people have? They sign a contract to use a phone? I don’t know!
Well, as for the monthly cost, that’s where things get interesting. Technically, my plan should still cost $5 a month, like above. Using the method I outlined in my earlier entry of buying a 30 day card and then adding 365 days of service, I usually pay $64.95 for 13 months. But something odd happened when I activated this new phone.
My expiration date was sometime in June 2016. But when I activated the phone, that date got moved to December 2017. Hard to believe, but that’s 18 months of free service. I know this phone came with “triple minutes,” so maybe that has something to do with it. However it happened, I am paying $0 a month until December of 2017.
We’ll make an excuse for this site.
Of course, I can only use the existing minutes on my account for the next 18 months. I’ve never used more than 100 minutes a year in the past and I don’t expect that to change. If I used everything up, I would have to pay something. So as long as I keep the web usage in check, I should have no problems. Even if I did run out of data, I could still use it to call and text, which is what it’s for anyway.
There are nicer Tracfones. But I didn’t want anything that would tempt me to check the internet and use up precious “units.” No, I will be sticking with using maps and my brain instead of GPS. So, cheers to cheap cell phones!
What will happen to the old phone? The classic Nokia 2600? It still works like a charm. I’m thinking of staging a blockbuster giveaway with the Nokia as the prize. What do you think?