phonedeals

Verizon Wireless, and Alltel which Verizon Wireless will soon to acquire, announced new smartphones yesterday, in time for the holiday season.

Just over this past weekend, Verizon Wireless started selling Blackberry Storm, which Verizon Wireless has probably pumped multi-hundred millions of marketing dollars to drive up the expectation and demand, now Verizon said another hot smartphone, the Samsung Omnia, will be in retail stores on Dec. 8.

Samsung Omnia is similiar to Samsung’s Instinct sold by Sprint Nextel exclusively, is a touchscreen Windows 6.1 device with haptics feedback.

Other features include the Opera 9.5 mobile browser, a 5.0 megapixel camera, stereo bluetooth, GPS, playback of movies and songs along with a 3.4 inch display, all the great stuff you can expect out of a smart phone nowadays.

Pricewise, it will be $249.99 after a $70 mailin rebate with a 2-year contract.

Alltel’s new phones include the Motorola Hint, aka QA30, along with the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro. The Hint is a consumer messaging centric device with a sliding vertical keyboard while Touch devices are Windows mobile touchscreen designs.

Touch Diamond will cost $249 and Touch Pro will cost $279.99.

This holiday season, more than half of youngsters expect a phone - a smart phone, that is - as a gift from Santa.  Industry estimates put two-thirds of teens and nearly half of tweens alreadying owning a mobile phone.  We know kids and teens communicate, constantly.  They talk, they text, they instant message, they tweet …

The ideal phone for them?

AT&T’s iPhone is great, but its $199 price tag and hefty monthly fee is daunting for parents trying to save money in this holiday season;  Sprint’s Instinct is cheaper on handset, but the $99 monthly fee will deter most of parents too.  T-mobile’s G1 is interesting and could be a good choice, the latest report indicates T-mobile expects the newly launched G1 sales top 1 million in 2008.

Smartphones are becoming a fashion this holiday season. A recently released Sprint research revealed that 45% of consumers expect to give or hoping to receive electronics as gifts this holiday season, with one-third of the electronics are smartphones.

Given the plethoral of smartphones out there, picking one for yourself could be tricky, and purchasing one for someone else could be daunting. Below is an incomplete list of smartphone deals for your reference only.

Samsung Instinct
Sprint
$129 with 2-year contract

HTC G1 (Google phone)
T-mobile
$179 with 2-year contract

Apple iPhone 3G
AT&T
$199-$299 with 2-year contract

Blackberry Storm (available today Nov 21)
Verizon Wireless

Blackberry Bold
AT&T
$300 with 2-year contract

Blackberry Pearl - clamshell version
T-mobile

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
AT&T, T-mobile
$800, no contract required

Palm Treo Pro (Jan 2009)
Sprint
$569 no contract required

Blackberry Curve
Sprint

HTC Touch Dimond
Sprint, Alltell

Our yesterday’s blog focused on the budget-oriented consumers, today we will turn our attention to those “high end” consumers.

If your life style calls for an unlimited sort of things - unlimited calls, unlimited data usage, unlimited texting, unlimited video messaging, unlimited picture sharing, … then you should serious consider the unlimited plans offered by the wireless carriers. The following table compares the top 3 wireless carriers’ family plans from pricing perspective only:

Sprint Everything Messaging Family:
$99.99 (1 or 2 lines)
$109.98 (3 lines)
$119.97 (4 lines)

Verizon Nationwide Select Family Share:
$119.99 (1 or 2 lines)
$129.98 (3 lines)
$139.97 (4 lines)

AT&T FamilyTalk Talk & Text:
$119.99 (1 or 2 lines)
$129.98 (3 lines)
$139.97 (4 lines)

While Sprint’s plan clearly shows some value, you also need to consider other factors, such as device choices, coverage strengths, etc. So, before making up your mind, shop around, talk to people already on the network you are thinking of, and give it a test run, as all carriers allow a 30-day penalty-free trial period.

Happy shopping!

The prepaid wireless plans used to be regarded as credit-challenged consumers’ choices only, not anymore. It’s estimated somewhere between 10% to 20% of U.S. wireless customers are in the prepaid plans. And you will have plenty of choices ranging from Tier I carriers to your hometown wireless carriers. Considering an average prepaid customer spends anywhere between $20 to $30 a month (vs. a typical postpaid customers spends anywhere between $50 to $70 a month), if you fit the following profile, a prepaid plan might actually represent a great deal for you -

Not happy with the large amount of unused minutes in your postpaid plan;
Always stay in town - without much out of town travels;
Like flexibility and dislike commitment;
Believe $1 could actually buy a lot of things, or, minutes.

To further help you save money, Virgin Mobile has a Sugar Mama program which lets a subscriber to earn free minutes by viewing ads. Boost Mobile recently launched a plan that is $1 a day!

Yes, we know, an $1 now could go a long way!

Welcome to Phone Deals!

With the holiday season fast approaching, most of people need to start thinking about their gift lists, now. Regardless you are a believer whether the economy is in a recession or not, I assume you are a believer of saving money, especially when you face a long list of gifts to be given out, and the shrinking wallet and investment account balances …

So, let’s talk about phone deals, or specifically, mobile phone deals.

Oh, dear, what a choice we could have in the ever changing mobile world!

On your friends and family members’ wish lists, I bet some of them will have some of these: the iconic iPhone from Apple, the iPhone killer Instinct from Samsung, the Gphone from T-mobile, the Storm from Blackberry, the Touch HD from HTC, the Curve from Blackberry (OK, one has to wait for this till early next year), …

Of course when you pick the handset, you will also have to pick up a wireless carrier at the same time: the best network in the US Verizon Wireless, the raising the bar ATT Wireless, the Now Networks Sprint, the value play of T-mobile, the supervalue play of MetroPCS, Leapwireless, etc. etc.

Faced with these dizzing choices, one could easily get lost. That’s where Phone Deals will chime in, help you navigate this maze and get the best deal that suits your specific needs.

Stay tuned …