<p>I'm sure that most college students have cell phones. Well I'm going to be one of those students. However, I have not owned a cell phone before because I just refuse to own one. I thrived with my house phone with calling my friends and stuff. But now that I'm going to college, I'm most likely going to be using a cell phone. What kind of cell phone companies should I go for? I'm not really a huge phone person, so I really don't know what kind of cell phone will save me the most.</p>
<p>its a f*****g phone, chill out</p>
<p>haha, um check out verizon, they're pretty good.</p>
<p>actually you need to chill out. his question was rather simple. i never saw the need for a cell phone either. i'm not one to really talk much on the phone and when i do it's just to set things up and meet up that's it. as far as which company to go with, ask some students who go to your school what companies get good signal up there because last thing you want is a phone that doesn't get reception. other than that just check out the plans different companies offer because there's a bunch of features some have and others don't: free incoming calls, nights starting at 7, rollover minutes, favorite 5, etc.</p>
<p>I'm not a big phone person either. I've had a cell phone for almost two years now and I feel lost without having it, but I don't use it often. For this reason, my phone is prepaid thru Virgin Mobile (<a href="http://www.virginmobileusa.com%5B/url%5D">www.virginmobileusa.com</a>) and I like it a lot.</p>
<p>the biggest concern you should have is what cell phone company gets the best reception at the school you will be attending & the best reception in your hometown because those are the places you will talk most often.Typically the bigger the company, the better the reception, so most likely you'll go with verizon or cingular.</p>
<p>It all depends where in the country you go to school, but generally Verizon is probably the best.</p>
<p>I've had prepaid and post-pay. Pre-pay is a pain in the ass because you always have to monitor your minutes and, of course, you never have a lot of minutes when you need to call home and have a legnthy conversation. I have Cingular and it works great. Definately go with either Cingular or Verizon, because they have the most towers so you'll have the best service if your school is in a rural area like mine. </p>
<p>If you'll be on the plan alone, try to stick with the lowest number of minutes and try not to get sucked into text messaging. With taxes and other government fees, your $79.99/month deal easily becomes $100.00/month. I know there are text messaging packages, but once you start, you get addicted and pretty soon you've gone way over the set number of messages that you pay a set amount for. I don't have a texting package, but I get yelled at for texting every single month.</p>
<p>verizzzzooonn!</p>
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If you'll be on the plan alone, try to stick with the lowest number of minutes and try not to get sucked into text messaging. With taxes and other government fees, your $79.99/month deal easily becomes $100.00/month.
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<p>Wise words. A $40 plan (the typical basic plan) is more like $55 with all the taxes and mandatory fees.</p>
<p>My phone normally should cost in the range of $59.99 per month, costs me well over $80.00</p>
<p>But I get free text messaging.</p>
<p>I guess that eases the pain a bit...</p>
<p>I have Verizon. It's quite nice, most of my friends have it too. If your parents / whoever you would want to talk to have cell phones, you may want to go with the same plan, since most networks offer unlimited network minutes.</p>
<p>dude chill the **** out....its just a phone...not like ull have anyone to call anyway</p>
<p>personally, i'd say anything BUT cingular.
it worked fine at home (bay area) and then i got here, and a few months ago, EVERY SINGLE CALL started dropping. EFFING ANNOYING!!!
i had to upgrade to a quad-band phone to fix the problem.
they didn't even know what was going on.
i like the features, like rollover minutes, and cingular-to-cingular is free. a lot of networks do that, like verizon.
so, RECEPTION really is a key factor, as is how many of your friends are in a certain network. also, make sure to get a quad-band phone (most of the new ones are) and research phone models BEFORE you get one, just to make sure people aren't already complaining about it xD</p>
<p>My school is a rural area in the mountains and Cingular has worked fine for me. My calls hardly ever drop and my reception is pretty good most of the time.</p>
<p>I've used Verizon and Cingular before. I prefer anything BUT verizon phones (since many of them have major features disabled).</p>
<p>Then again, since you don't even use a phone, just sign a 1 year contract and get a free phone. Don't do 2-year.</p>
<p>right.
i'm not saying, oh geez don't get cingular! but if i personally were choosing again, i would have researched what worked best in my area (obviously NOT cingular)
if there's a carrier (cingular or otherwise) who gets consistently high praises from the people in a certain area, go with that. but like laser said, 1 year is better than 2, because should something go wrong, you're not stuck with it for what seems like forever. or have to pay about $175 if you cancel.</p>
<p>talk to someone who goes where you're going, or even call the admin-- ask which carriers actually get service. my school is such a gigantic dead spot that i changed from cingular to verizon to have service there. cingular was TERRIBLE but verizon is wonderful, but that's just my area.</p>
<p>look, i ****ing invent cell phones.</p>
<p>If you have money:</p>
<p>Nokia N95 (Wi-Fi, 5 MP autofocus, gps, 3G+++)
Nokia N93 (camcorder)</p>