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I used the same carrier that Catholic nuns use – Virgin Mobile. I was never really disappointed by their service at all, and unlimited everything for $45/mo is the same as what Wal-Mart has, except it doesn't make you look as broke. I only had minimal obstacles with their 3G network, and most of the time I got an excellent signal outdoors.
I just picked it because it was a nice no-contract phone with my family's carrier, and the Galaxy Reverb did not disappoint. :p |
I just looked on Walmart's website and the Lumia 520 is now $54.94... I hate it when I see devices I own sell for lower prices like that >_<
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I'm totally signing up for the T-Mobile test drive thing. Even with it's an iPhone, it's still awesome wow :D
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Funny enough, I'm considering cutting my contract.
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12 GB of monthly data is a very nice thing to have, and that will stay when my contract expires, but it's still a postpaid phone plan to pay monthly. I'm thinking of transitioning my main mobile phone number to pre-paid, or PAYG as you guys say. It should be an easy affair to convert to pre-paid (I have done this before shortly before going to college with one of my numbers) - the hard part is "merging" two separate phone numbers into one, keeping their balances and dropping one number. All phones sold over here are unlocked. No exceptions. Even if gotten from a carrier. |
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Even though my Lumia 520 is unlocked, it still has an AT&T logo on it. |
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I despise having provider logos on unlocked phones, honestly, whether it be on shell or in somewhere in the interface. It's just personal preference, I suppose.
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That's why I'm thinking of making sure my next phone is gotten straight from retail. No carrier stuff.
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Here in Denmark you can get phones on contract, but that's only really used by people on a really tight budget as far as I know. Most people just buy their phones in the electronics store, unlocked. I have never in my entire life seen a phone with physical carrier branding on the device. Besides, contracts don't tend to lock you in at all, and on average, each danish person switches service provider every 8 months.
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Over here, it's not often I see a phone without any evidence of it being tied to a carrier. If there aren't any logos present on the phone physically, then there's probably a carrier logo at startup on the phone. And depending on the phone, buying unlocked could be a pain because of its price (list price of a Samsung Galaxy S5 is $799.99 USD unlocked).
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List prices here in Denmark are pretty much the same. Here I have the three most popular phones at the moment:
Galaxy S5: 4777dkk = $872.73 iPhone 5S: 4888dkk = $893.00 Xperia Z2: 4999dkk = $913.29 But people still buy phones in the electronics store, because even on a two-year contract, the cheapest prices I could find were: Galaxy S5: 3560dkk = $650.30 iPhone 5S: 3999dkk = $730.56 Xperia Z2: 4350dkk = $794.68 |
I think some of those prices you listed there are actually a little more expensive for unlocked phones over here o.o
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I was browsing for a new phone to replace my Samsung Galaxy Reverb, and I'll honestly say I'm a little repulsed at the modern phone market (I can't imagine how bad the iPhone scene is if Android is like this).
I wanted to get a Samsung Galaxy S5, but that's $590, where it's $100 with contract. When I got to the plan selection screen it was the stupidest thing, they give me a choice between an overpriced all-in-one plan and a more customizable one that sticks you with a certain number of minutes and then forces you to pay extra at minimum for data. All the carriers did this or something weirdly similar, and it was embarrassing to say the least. Conclusion: Pay $75 to get my old phone back brand new, get old phone plan back with unlimited everything for $45/mo from Virgin Mobile, insert microSD card for music, be done with it. Enjoy my phone without paying out the ass, eh? |
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So the other night I left my laptop running, and killed its battery. Guess that's some good exercise for it.
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Hmm... The 1520, the 930, or the Xperia Z2... all are equally good choices, but all of them do have at least one point against in my opinion. The 1520 is just XBOX HEUG. 930 isn't out yet, and doesn't have microSD slot. Z2 is fragile and has a relatively iffy camera. |
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The 4" WVGA display of my phone is kind of getting in the way in a lot of things, anyway. I've noticed that there's now a bunch of games that, despite being playable, have unreadable text.
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To be honest, I wouldn't really bother with lesser-known OEMs with regard to pretty much everything.
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In the budget part of the Android market I would highly suggest you to take a look at Motorola's offerings. They have great value for money on their newer devices, just like the country emo said above.
If you are willing to take a look at the Windows Phone side, the absolute value for money beast is the Lumia 520. It really owns the low-end with a great experience at a price point where the androids are laggy and slow. |
Not all lesser OEMs are bad. I'm still on a crusade trying to convince people that Huawei is a great brand for what it is. I own a 3C and some minor hicups the phone rocks. Got it for 170, and I have mid-high preformance in a quality build and a decent shooter that can give great outdoor shots.
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I was listening to a speech by the CFO of AT&T yesterday and they were talking about their program where you can choose to buy a phone outright instead of having an extra 15 dollars tacked onto your plan every month, and how many people are taking advantage of it. He was claiming that the reason the cell phone market wasn't dropping in price dramatically like the TV and computer market was because phone companies stepped in and started subsidizing so customers didn't worry about being frugal or pushing for lower costs in phones, because the subsidized cost was the same no matter what they bought. A ton of people use that new program and he said it would push the cell phone market to lower their prices.
And plus the speech was directed at employees, not customers, so more likely to be more than just financial bluster. I hope he's right at least. |
I almost always demo devices every time I plan to get something anyway just before getting it. I don't like surprises.
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Huawei is not like those random name brand or white-box devices, they're a serious OEM with lots of global customers. I say global, because they only have 8% marketshare in China which is less than other Chinese brands, while doing really well globally relative to other Chinese brands. |
MYeah, but I mean lesser in the sense that its still viewed in a bad light, does not have the marketing force of the big 3 android makers, and in general is a hit and miss company. Other then that, sure you can argue that they're big, but then you would have to argue that alcatel or zte. One major plus though is the lack of an app drawer, having an iOS style os plus widgets and android functionality is god like.
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I'm wondering now if Lenovo purchases Motorola, would they continue to manufacture the Motorola phones with stock Android instead of heavily customizing the OS like what Samsung does.
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I just want that they treat brand reputation as a serious matter and make an effort to make compelling products. Last thing you want to see is probably having a brand that basically does nothing, or worse, tarnished because of... poor product decisions.
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When I was browsing service plans on Amazon, AT&T's was particularly unattractive, forcing you with exactly 450 minutes for something like $30/mo and then a choice between data plans ranging from 300 MB at +$10 to 50GB at +~$200. You couldn't opt out of data and texts were 20 cents per minute, which is crazy. You had an overall choice between that buyer's trainwreck and paying $65/mo for unlimited talk/text and again forcing you to tack on data for additional cost.
The cool part about the plan I had with Virgin Mobile is it costs the same as the Wal-Mart phone plans for the same service, except without the statement of "My phone service is from Wal-Mart" which is just ew. |
Guess this is what I'd expect to happen with a developer release of a phone OS: updates every other day. (I'm running the dev channel of Windows Phone 8.1 btw)
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I wonder why Google is going the route similar to iOS in terms of a flatter design. I'll be looking forward to seeing what Google has to offer in Android L as well.
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Eventually I suspect we will see the return of skeumorphic design. I'm not even sure if I spelled it right, but let's just say that it's basically what happens when every virtual representation looks like its physical counterpart.
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I don't mind that the mobile operating systems are going flat these days, but I do wish that there was more originality between competition, instead of following trends |
People like what they know, so if you get too original people get confused and stop liking you.
What drives design often has to do with psychology and where our world is technology-wise. Before, we needed the 3D elements to signify to use what we need to do. Our world is increasingly more virtual though and a virtual button is distinct from a physical one at this point, so it's much less necessary to make it look 3D on the screen. |
Xorg's interface looks so clean, pristine, and user-oriented… if only it'd see my built-in display I could run it :P They do have a hell of a lot of amazing command line applications that could suffice until I sort that out with my Arch installation, but the problem with executing that is my Broadcom WNA seriously won't shut up telling me that "TID 1 isn't agg'able" and interrupts me in the middle of typing commands at about 5 times per second. Wrote a service for systemctl or w/e its called telling it to stfu but it won't listen, so… :l
My headset came in the mail today, with the FedEx guy literally showing up not two minutes after I woke up. My old speakers make for a really good amplifier, and the bass is great, if it weren't for my ears itching up. It's better than anything I've had before, so it's good. :D |
I seem to find myself accidentally leaving power saver turned on while using my laptop these days.
Then again, nobody notices. Maybe that's a testament to how efficient today's platforms are. |
Was having all sorts of issues with my router this morning. Finally got sick of and decided to do something I meant to do months ago: update to Tomato firmware (Toastman mod in this case). Upgrade went fine (except I couldn't access the internet because it didn't carry over my MAC address spoof, which luckily I recorded before starting the upgrade), but I was locked out for an hour trying to find out why I couldn't get into the router settings. The old router login was a blank username and my custom password, turns out they just added a username and kept my password through the upgrade. So that took me a while to figure out. Once I did, cloned the old MAC address and hit save and bam, internet worked. As a bonus, the router web interface is responsive and has tons of features (QoS, ping and tracert, custom Linux scripts, logging, etc.), and I even got a nice 2 megabit boost to both up and downstream connections. This is freaking cool.
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Sometimes I wish my router's firmware could get updated by Verizon. I know, I could easily put my own firmware on it, but I'd rather not just void my ISP's terms of service, especially since it's their equipment and not mine.
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I guess I must be the only person satisfied with stock firmware on routers. Not that I'd need anything more, though.
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I'm iffy on Android L's design. Some parts I like it, some parts I wish we stay with KitKat design, such as the music player for example. Flat design is the trend, though IOS7/8, Android L, Mordern UI are all different, with some similiarities but still noticiably different. |
Too bad that one has to unlock their bootloader (thus wiping their data) to try Android L for now.
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Unlocking bootloaders on electronic "appliances" make me shudder.
You know, something about Seagate's newer hybrid HDDs don't really make sense. They're supposed to be OS-agnostic caching solutions that learn from usage patterns. If that's the case, why do they know when OS installation takes place and automatically puts the important OS data right in the cache without even a single read? :) (This is why good firmware on things like storage devices = super important for anything involving flash memory.) |
Looks like I'll be needing to make a new T&I DCC soon if this double posting doesn't stop lmao..
Anyways, maybe soon with that money I've been making at my job could I go into the world of SSDs.. eventually... |
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My Nexus 7 is also still under warranty (until November), so it's not something I'm willing to risk by unlocking the bootloader at the moment. Even though I could easily lock it again, it's just something I don't have time for at the moment. |
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My Moto X will probably not get any rooty flashy love, but I might test it on my N7 '13 but I'm not itching to give it a go, especially since its so incomplete atm. |
Speaking of incomplete software updates, I've been rather satisfied with the Windows 8.1 Developer Preview on my Lumia 520.
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I hate ROMS for that reason, missing or buggy features of staples like camera or radios. ;-; |
The lack of hardware support on some ROMs is probably another reason why I stick with stock on my Nexus 7 for now.
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So I've had my second computer graphics class today.
Creating OpenGL apps in Visual Studio, setting up colours and polygons, getting DLLs into the project, drawing things, timing repaints properly, frame rate counters, animating things, reading inputs, implementing menus... Zoinks! It was THAT easy? |
Well you probably got a step by step tutorial.
Everything is easy when you are shown what to do.(no intentional Columbus quote) |
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Hmm, just found out this morning that my laptop has stereo mix.. didn't realize that was still a thing on computers these days.
Then again, both of the laptops I previously owned had Conexant sound cards, so maybe it's Conexant that just doesn't do stereo mix. |
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So Apache is being a little bugger for me. It's timing out even though I've ensured it's running with a check in the terminal, I've doublechecked httpd.conf and nothing seems to be of issue. Most of the time it'll time out but sometimes it'll show a beige-coloured page with a pink-ish rectangle at the top, God knows what that means. I'd like to have this up and going sometime as it means vBulletin, ergo PokéSphere. My old server seems to have come in a gold-trimmed cedar gift basket, whereas this one has arrived in a beaten-up, over-duct taped package seemingly handled by Ace Ventura from HDS. Maybe I should go ahead and have pokesphere.net start propagating it all up for its DNS while I sort out Apache, eh? |
The only thing you could perhaps try to do is initiate a crontab to ensure your Apache process keeps running, but I'm not sure if that would be any good or not in your case.
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Sorry if Im changing the topic or something but,
I've kind of grown an adeptness at graphic designing... and the funny thing is I use Sony Vegas Pro to make it. Is this strange to you guys? Does anyone else here do that? I discovered being able to do that while trying to make a thumbnail for a Youtube video I had made, and it looked surprisingly damn good. Simple, but good. I think? Anyways, I know normally people use Photoshop or Gimp, but I use a video editor. Kind of weird, but it works surprisingly well. I cannot do anything fancy, but I think there is asthetic appeal if you're trying to make a youtube thumbnail. Any thoughts on this? Also, I may start frequenting this forum much more often ^.^ |
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It's a strange choice, but not completly un heard of, I know several youtubers who make their thumnails and such in the editor. You don't need a power tool like Photoshop for them. |
guys, if we want to nominate a website of the month, how do we do so? Please quote me when you respond
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Also, just for reference, but if you have any questions relevant to the section, please direct them to me via PM or VM instead of posting in this thread. Thanks. |
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and vote for one by the 12th. |
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Wi-Fi can actually get pretty decent speeds as long as you're on at least 802.11n. (use 802.11ac for best results.)
On another topic, Windows Phone 7.8 seems to be eligible for extended support, and its mainstream support is going to end soon. |
I'm probably going to dread the day that the Lumia 520 will no longer receive OS updates. I would at least hope that day is far off, even though it does seem like Nokia comes out with new Windows Phones literally every few months
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Sometimes I wish I could have it all.
I'm intrigued over the potential of copper telephone lines these days - crazy how much better they can get. It would be most likely to be useful in many situations as it's extremely likely the average premises have copper telephone installations just right there - you can certainly go with anything that's fast, then use telephone lines just right before the premises. |
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I should also say that this is from the staff/faculty network as well, which I have access to, because well... I am technically am employee. The student/guest network is throttled only to 1Mb/s down and up. |
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But am pretty jelly. Interesting bit about the copper lines, I mean I would much prefer Fiber, but that would probably would talk a while. |
Sometimes Macs are known to be faster than Windows computers, and with my time on this MacBook, i've found this to be a decently fast computer for the most part. I hardly even remember my old Dell laptop because of it, sometimes that would go fast but others it would be slow as a snail.
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Right now, only Mac system I have is an iBook. Bought it many, many years ago, but haven't touched it much since purchasing, though, so it still looks decently new. Only thing I don't like is its speed, but I suppose it could be upgraded by adding more RAM. Someday, I'd love to get my hands on one of those new MacBooks. They might be a little too expensive for me, but would surely be able to manage by saving.
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I've found Macs and PCs to perform the same given the exact same software. Makes sense, too, seeing as they practically share a platform these days.
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I will say that I do like the idea of how Macs do use Intel-based processors nowadays, especially since it means a person can set up a dual-boot between Windows and OS X.
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Okay, question. By the end of the year, I'm gonna update my phones. I have a simple Xperia Mini for daily stuff, and a front for my slightly bigger Honor 3C, which is quite expensive, and I don't want to take out a lot. The mini is becoming too slow, needing updates every day or so, and its running on ICS. The Honor 3C is gonna eventually take its place like I said, as an everday phone. Definitely going Sony for the "show" phone, but I'm wondering if I should jump on a Z1 compact(by years end its gonna be OOOOOOOOOOLD) or wait for the Z3C to be announced and wait for a price drop? Z1C is like 300 euros right now, by then 250. Snapdragon 800, Adreno 330 and 2gigs in 2015 isn't going to be bad at all, but still its dated. And sure hypothetically, we don't know if the Z3C is even gonna happen. But I want sony. And a small screen, with great specs.(At least compared to the 3C which is using MediaTek, so its a crapshoot.)
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guys my phone is upsetting me
it knows where I'm going to work today even though I haven't told it anything of the sort and it's telling me how long it'll take to drive there HOW DOES IT KNOW WHERE I'M GOING ): |
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I have my work location set in Google Now, and I never get notifications on stuff related to it :p
What I do get cards for in Google Now is a local theater that maybe I went to once and that was it. |
When something in Windows Phone goes really wrong, it can go hilariously wrong with strange errors that'd belong on desktop PCs. (This is what happens when a combination of Developer Preview + BitLocker + updating to Lumia Cyan causes to the phone - the TPM goes bonkers.)
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So I've got a quick question about iTunes, and hopefully someone can help me with this. For some odd reason, when I try to update an album by switching it to a compilation, it won't save when I confirm it. Does anyone know why this might be happening? Or rather, if someone has had this issue before, what did you do to fix it?
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So, can someone tell me why phone makers keep jipping their smaller offering, and not taking the route Sony did with the Z1C? Its why I mentioned it above, and why I'm not going with anything else. Like look at the newly announced G3 Beat from LG:
http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3_beat_with_5_hd_display_laser_af_camera_goes_official-news-9054.php For a mid-rangers, sure 1.2GHz at 1gb sounds excellent, but you just know they're gonna charge about 300 euros for it, which is ludicrous with those specs. The reason why I say that is cause around 300 I can get either a Nexus 5, a Z1 Compact, Moto X(eh not too good a comparison), or an S4 active! And that's just from what I gave a quick glance at, not the whole list of phones in that price range. If they're gonna sell it at around 300-400 euros(which they will obviously) at least give us 2 gigs of ram and 1.5ghz. If you're wondering why I have a problem, its cause after sony, LG's design philosophy for the G3 is my favorite. |
So, can someone tell me why phone makers keep jipping their smaller offering, and not taking the route Sony did with the Z1C? Its why I mentioned it above, and why I'm not going with anything else. Like look at the newly announced G3 Beat from LG:
http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3_beat_with_5_hd_display_laser_af_camera_goes_official-news-9054.php For a mid-rangers, sure 1.2GHz at 1gb sounds excellent, but you just know they're gonna charge about 300 euros for it, which is ludicrous with those specs. The reason why I say that is cause around 300 I can get either a Nexus 5, a Z1 Compact, Moto X(eh not too good a comparison), or an S4 active! And that's just from what I gave a quick glance at, not the whole list of phones in that price range. If they're gonna sell it at around 300-400 euros(which they will obviously) at least give us 2 gigs of ram and 1.5ghz. If you're wondering why I have a problem, its cause after sony, LG's design philosophy for the G3 is my favorite, and I would love to own one. Just not with those specs, and the expected price markup. |
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Money is a good answer, but its ridiculous. At this point the R&D of new CPUs and innards of cell phones has reached a sort of peak this last year, with no real breakthroughs in new technology(except maybe some power saving). At the rate that it was created and now stabilized, you should easily be able to buy a phone in the 300 euro price bracket and get something with a Snapdragon 800 and at the least 1.5Ghz of power. The price disparity between the various power levels is ridiculous even by PC standards.
Low end(maybe 1 gig of ram, some 1.2GHz of power, Dual Core maybe):90-150 Euros then it jumps to Mid end(Definitely a gig, maybe 1.5, again 1.2GHz, Most Dual Core, rarely a Quad Core):200-300 Euros And anything High-End with a Snapdragon 800, anywhere around 1.5-2.5GHz, Quad Core/Octa Core and an excellent snapper goes from 500 to 700. In the 400-500 price range there are some phones, but most are either last year models or insanely marked up phones(I'm looking at you HTC. 450 for the Desire 610?) If they could shorten the gaps, and hell maybe even lower the prices it would be great. One thing I'm definitely going to be annoyed about is if Android phones don't lose their price bloat when MS' patent extortion stops, as the money lost to paying royalties translates to profit, thus a chance to lower prices. Will it happen? Of course not, ♥♥♥♥ing greed runs everything! /Rant |
Well I ended up paying only $100 for an LG G2. Although it was supposed to be around $700 at the time.
My mother's two-year contract with AT&T expired, and since she had no intention of switching services, she renewed it with the G2 as a by-product. The G2's specs are neck-to-neck even with the S5 even though it's a few quarters behind. |
Contract bought phones are bull, you usually end up paying a lot more for the services you don't use then by getting the phone at full price.
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My mother continued to use her original phone and just renewed her contract. The G2 has nothing to do with AT&T anymore. We haven't been charged for that phone since the day we bought it.
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...I just realized I still haven't bought any phones yet.
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