It has been several years since we’ve had a cellphone, and we have been contemplating getting a new cellphone (or cellphones) and replacing our land line. Having a cellphone will be useful when we’re driving to and from Southern California later this year. However, I’m not sure what phones and plans would be the best for us. Since the ability to read email or check the web from my phone seems very useful to me, I am very much interested in a phone capable of that. The question is the cost, of course.

I checked a few cellular vendors, and all of them are pretty much in the same ballpark for their voice services. Since we don’t talk all that much, a plan for a single phone with 300-400 normal minutes and unlimited night/weekend minutes (when I’m most likely to use the phone to make long phone calls) is $30-$40. This is about what I’m paying for my land line (sans any long distance). Service$60 is the ballpark for two phones. In order to effectively eliminate my land line, I’d probably need two phones.

This doesn’t seem so bad except it is likely that most of our calls would be to each other, and hey, mobile-to-mobile calls are unlimited. Heh.

The data plans is where things get sticky. It seems that nobody sells anything but “unlimited” nowadays, which is $25-$30 depending on the carrier. And the kicker is that you need one for both phones, which frankly sucks. Could always get one data capable phone and one not, or just not get one. But you lose the cool features like email/etc. The crappiest part is that I’d end up using this more than the actual phone call part!

And you are required to carry a data plan to have one of these, of course, which is obviously the phone that any self respecting geek wants.

iPhone

Any tips out there from any cellphone enthusiasts? Because my past experiences with Verizon are awful, and everyone says that Cingular is the devil, I am also trying to decide between T-Mobile and AT&T. My previous cellphone was T-Mobile, and I was fairly pleased with their customer service. However, AT&T is comparable price wise, and I’d be required to go with them if wanted an iPhone. (Even if I didn’t start out with an iPhone, it’d be easier to go with AT&T if I ever thought I’d get one…) Then again, T-Mobile has the G1 (aka Googlephone).