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nerdrum posted:So, my girlfriend and I are both in a grandfathered Data plan, we're "eligible" for upgrades in three days but the very aggressive guy at Verizon let us know that we'd be dumped into a bucket plan if we upgrade -- there is currently no way around this right? When I changed over about a week ago I measured my family's average data usage. We ended up saving like 40 bucks a month on our plan. Not sure how much you'd be paying for what you use, but it might actually save you a few.
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Aug 29, 2012 23:44
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On Terra Firma posted:When I changed over about a week ago I measured my family's average data usage. We ended up saving like 40 bucks a month on our plan. Not sure how much you'd be paying for what you use, but it might actually save you a few. I, alone used 4.6 gigs of data last month. my girlfriend used a little over two gigs. We kind of need unlimited since we both travel a horrific amount and almost exclusively never near wifi
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Aug 29, 2012 23:48
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What exactly are you doing with your phone to use that much data?
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Aug 29, 2012 23:49
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Cojawfee posted:What exactly are you doing with your phone to use that much data? I'm a visual merchandiser for a pretty obnoxiously large company so getting plan-o-grams directly to my phone that are usually 40-60 megabytes, along with quick photos of set areas and everything like that adds up super fast, not including actual browsing or just using my phone like a normal person would.
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Aug 29, 2012 23:53
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Cojawfee posted:What exactly are you doing with your phone to use that much data? Standard definition video can be 0.5-1GB/hr. HD Netflix is 2.3GB/hr.
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Aug 30, 2012 00:03
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Aatrek posted:Each of you could buy a new phone off-contract and activate it on your lines. That would be more expensive up front, but save you cash in the long run. 
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Aug 30, 2012 01:42
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Cojawfee posted:What exactly are you doing with your phone to use that much data?
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Aug 30, 2012 03:33
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It's a troll question. They try and get you to say that you're tethering without a tether package, then admonish you for "stealing".
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Aug 30, 2012 04:39
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I was just wondering, because I stream music every day (well, not anymore, it gets too hot to leave my phone in my car) and use all kinds of data yet I'm always under 2 gigs. The most I ever used was when I used my phone as my main internet when I moved and that was only using 11 gigs which was all of my internet browsing and downloading.
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Aug 30, 2012 05:09
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I generally burn through 4-6GB a month from using Google Music and Spotify. I did a little experiment, and stored my music on my phone instead of using Google Music to stream it. So far I'm 1/3 into my bill cycle and only used maybe 650 MB.
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Aug 30, 2012 05:51
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nerdrum posted:I, alone used 4.6 gigs of data last month. my girlfriend used a little over two gigs. We kind of need unlimited since we both travel a horrific amount and almost exclusively never near wifi Yeah, it seems buying a phone outright (probably eBay or Craigslist) is your best option. What phone are you looking at? If you travel a lot, the Razr Maxx would probably still be a decent amount used, but would do the trick battery wise.
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Aug 30, 2012 12:39
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urrently, my wife and I have Verizon phones but our contract ended over a year ago. We have thought about upgrading but the price and our lack of usage does not work out well with Verizon. We were looking into Page Plus to save some money while getting the "same" service for cheap. My wife is thinking about calling into Verizon to see if they would be willing to match price so that they could keep our business. Would Verizon even do that? (We never call in so we do not know)
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Aug 31, 2012 20:45
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Bizarro Kanyon posted:urrently, my wife and I have Verizon phones but our contract ended over a year ago. We have thought about upgrading but the price and our lack of usage does not work out well with Verizon. We were looking into Page Plus to save some money while getting the "same" service for cheap. It can't hurt to ask but I'd be extraordinarily surprised if they played ball. They have 94 million subscribers and no compunction about raising prices on every last one of them, they wouldn't give a poo poo if you left.
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Aug 31, 2012 20:56
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Magic Underwear posted:It can't hurt to ask but I'd be extraordinarily surprised if they played ball. They have 94 million subscribers and no compunction about raising prices on every last one of them, they wouldn't give a poo poo if you left. That is what I was expecting. Just wondering if anyone has had luck before. I will at least give it a try. Thanks
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Aug 31, 2012 22:06
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Duckman2008 posted:Rooting that phone shouldn't be that hard, but the only non root app that I know of that'll work is FoxFi. And I've personally found the app to work on some phones, not in others. But no, pretty sure Verizon did not lose a lawsuit, and definitely still blocks unpaid for tethering on unlimited data when possible. Well, my mistake, verizon didnt lose a lawsuit, they had to pay the FCC a fine over their imposing "pay for hotspot" service http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57484000-38/verizon-to-pay-$1.25m-fcc-fine-forced-to-allow-tethering-apps/
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Sep 1, 2012 04:44
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So, after a few days of struggling to get any decent service out of my Galaxy Nexus, i called up verizon tech support in hopes they could offer me some kind of solution. They flat out told me that they have no idea if/when an update to fix the signal strength issues would ever be released, and that if I'm unhappy with the device I should return it where I got it. They said I could reinstate my upgrade and hold onto it until I see another device that I liked. Is there ANYTHING on the horizon worth being excited about? I've seen the galaxy 3 and I was utterly unimpressed with it. The razr maxx has good battery life and all that, but it has a poo poo display for a phone in 2012. HTC doesn't make anything worth upgrading to. I just feel kind of deflated. The galaxy nexus was everything I wanted in a phone, except it can hardly be used as a phone. Such a loving disappointment 
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Sep 1, 2012 05:56
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What disappoints you about the GS3? If TouchWiz is the only thing holding you back, you can pretty much make that invisible with a launcher like Apex or Nova - or you can root it and put in a stripped-down custom rom (like the 'Beans' rom, or CyanogenMod preview builds). I actually came to the GS3 from the Galaxy Nexus, and it's faster, more responsive, it has a better screen (to me), and a much better camera.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:13
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Aatrek posted:What disappoints you about the GS3? If TouchWiz is the only thing holding you back, you can pretty much make that invisible with a launcher like Apex or Nova - or you can root it and put in a stripped-down custom rom (like the 'Beans' rom, or CyanogenMod preview builds). I actually came to the GS3 from the Galaxy Nexus, and it's faster, more responsive, it has a better screen (to me), and a much better camera. Well for one, it's extremely expensive and I'd rather wait until the price drops to even consider it. I'm also skeptical about updates at anything resembling regular intervals. I just don't see anything beyond Jellybean making it to the S3 because of how slow Samsung is to release updates for their phones, as are most manufacturers. The ironic thing is I work for T-Mobile. I'm just on a family plan that's considerably cheaper with better coverage through Verizon. I've played with the S3 in our stores and I just frankly haven't really been impressed with it. The other issue is that the same problem on the Nexus is popping up left and right on the S3. Samsung really hosed up the design on their antennas and nobody seems to know why. It's not just us, it's on verizons side as well and their tech support last night told me to steer clear of the S3 if only for that. The one thing I'm hoping for is that I hold onto my Fascinate once I roll back my upgrade, and I splurge on something else around thanksgiving. Especially if it's a Nexus device.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:23
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$199 is extremely expensive? Or are you looking to buy it off-contract? Regarding the antennas - I don't know about the T-Mobile version, but the GS3 has MUCH better reception than my Nexus on Verizon. I get pretty solid 4G coverage all day, but maybe I just have better coverage here. Aatrek fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Sep 1, 2012 |
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Sep 1, 2012 07:35
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Aatrek posted:$199 is extremely expensive? Or are you looking to buy it off-contract? The Galaxy was free through Best Buy. It literally cost me nothing to upgrade. Verizon tech support told me they get tons of calls about the S3, just like they do the Nexus.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:39
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Well, that would do it. The Nexus is 10 months old, which is why it was free. The GS3 is a standard, current-gen phone with standard pricing.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:47
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199 is going to be the price of any of the new phones on the horizon when they come out as well, so you may need to redo your budget or get used to the nexus. That battery life. It gets...easier with time, my friend 
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Sep 1, 2012 07:55
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Well I don't really have too much of a qualm about the price of the phone itself. It just hasn't really impressed me. Yet. What I'm hoping for, and this is seeming much more likely, is that I return the phone and wait for the holiday shopping season to start. There should be some decent deals by Christmas or Thanksgiving. We'll see I guess. I just can't keep using a phone that drops calls and can't even maintain 4g for more than an hour without cutting out. There's no point.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:58
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On Terra Firma posted:I've played with the S3 in our stores and I just frankly haven't really been impressed with it. The other issue is that the same problem on the Nexus is popping up left and right on the S3. Samsung really hosed up the design on their antennas and nobody seems to know why. It's not just us, it's on verizons side as well and their tech support last night told me to steer clear of the S3 if only for that. Also, the theory that this phone won't see anything beyond Jelly Bean is incredibly silly. The original SGS devices and the GS2 devices have been some of the best (aftermarket) supported Android devices of all time, and the GS3 is already no exception -- AOKP, CyanogenMod, and MIUI are all available. I mean, yeah, if you want to run nasty Samsung ROMs beyond Key Lime Pie you might be out of luck. But you can solve that problem really easily by not running nasty Samsung ROMs. Heck, I've got a Verizon Fascinate kicking around the house that's running JB. The big problems with buying a Verizon Galaxy S III are: -- It's at a lovely place on the value curve. They're still moving for around $450 on eBay and craigslist, and no Verizon phone in the history of the world has maintained value like that over a favorable timeline other than the iPhones. Generally, $300 secondhand is what you want to pay for a Verizon Android device as it'll get you in while the getting's still good and let you recoup most of your investment when it's time to sell. -- It rewards Samsung for stringing us along with lovely Verizon hardware over the last year and a half. As someone who went from the Droid Charge to the Galaxy Nexus and is now eyeballing the GS3, this isn't lost on me. Samsung has been getting away with some pretty flawed products, and buying a GS3 just shows them that improving their poo poo as incrementally as possible instead of forcing them to build something good was the right bet. So, that's probably pretty bad. -- It rewards Samsung for continuing to ship TouchWiz phones. These custom Android skins are pretty much loving vomit and Samsung's tacky iOS-wannabe diarrhea pack is the most egregious offender. I was actually happy to see them lose in court because it gives you a sliver of hope that they'll stop pissing away their resources on this tasteless bullshit and will keep their focus locked in on improving the hardware. Showing Samsung that the Galaxy Nexus sells poorly and the Flagship TouchWiz Shitbrigade Version 3 ~Higher~Margins~Edition~ is a hit sends exactly the wrong message. But at the same time, one of them has good radio hardware and battery life, and one of them doesn't. And then of course, the reason we're all stuck buying the GS3 anyway: -- All the other choices are somehow worse. I mean, what are we going to do? - Buy Motorola devices with locked bootloaders, bullshit aftermarket support, and intentional regressions from device-to-device? No thanks. - You already pointed out that HTC has nothing worth looking at currently or on the horizon. High Tech Computer indeed! - LG more like "lawl, gross" - Switch carriers for the superior HSPA+ version of the Galaxy Nexus? Frankly if you don't have an unlimited LTE plan you should have already done this, but for those of us who do I think it's a smarter bet to hedge on the sweet nectar of LTE and just find the best vessel Verizon will sell us for it - Wait for the next Nexus device? This would make sense on a GSM carrier, but with the way the Verizon GNex sold I'd be sorta surprised if they pick the next one up. We're not playing in a real ecosystem here, we're playing in an artificial one. The facts are that of Verizon phones, the GS3 ticks all the right boxes for nerds: strong radios, improved battery life, good AMOLED screen, best camera, top-tier processor, wide accessory ecosystem, and heavy aftermarket support.
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Sep 1, 2012 09:02
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kbar posted:Very well reasoned points I agree with basically all of these points, but I'm still going to wait a bit for the next line of phones to be rolling out. I've got a feeling even if the S3 is going to be my best bet, it will drop in price over the coming months or so. I just don't think it will retain it's value once we roll into the fall. As far as price on the S3 goes it's 149 on Amazon.com, but I'm going to wait for the black one to drop because I really dislike the blue and white. Great post though. 
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Sep 1, 2012 14:10
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Agreed on the colors, but I'm a case-douche anyway and I like the look of the Ringke Slim on a white GS3. I'm a fan of black-on-white, but I've been carrying black/gray phones in black TPU cases for long enough, it might be fun to get something off-beat and stupid looking like orange or teal or whatever the gently caress. The metric I'm using now is Droid RAZR Maxx secondhand pricing, since it's a couple devices removed from the top of the heap (GNex, GS3). They're still moving for about $350 used, so it's like, gently caress. How much longer do I really want to wait, you know? The next iPhone launch should drag the price down a little, maybe 50ish bucks. But really, all signs point to the GS3 and the upcoming RAZR HD as the kingpins moving into the holidays and beyond. And by next year we'll already be looking toward summer for the GS4 so any purchases in Q1 or Q2 are going to feel silly. I dunno. Unless Google pulled a late-2012 Nexus for Verizon out of its rear end with non-PenTile AMOLED 720p (which is only of marginal value at this point), a Wolfson DAC (bestill my beating heart), and some kind of hypothetical power-efficient quadcore chip (lol), GS3's throne and pricepoint might be more stable than your average Android device.
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Sep 1, 2012 14:32
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nerdrum posted:I'm a visual merchandiser for a pretty obnoxiously large company so getting plan-o-grams directly to my phone that are usually 40-60 megabytes, along with quick photos of set areas and everything like that adds up super fast, not including actual browsing or just using my phone like a normal person would.
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Sep 1, 2012 19:31
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On Terra Firma posted:So, after a few days of struggling to get any decent service out of my Galaxy Nexus, i called up verizon tech support in hopes they could offer me some kind of solution. They flat out told me that they have no idea if/when an update to fix the signal strength issues would ever be released, and that if I'm unhappy with the device I should return it where I got it. They said I could reinstate my upgrade and hold onto it until I see another device that I liked. Honestly. I'm really happy with my maxx. I have a gnex at home. Sits unused because of battery primarily. If it had the maxxs battery life id still carry it. RAZR HD or swap to a maxx now. That's the choice if you hate the sgs3 so much.
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Sep 1, 2012 21:46
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Interesting development on the SGN front. I just spoke with Samsung, Google, and Verizon. Samsung said there could be an issue with crosstalk between towers that's causing the connection to fluctuate on my device, but that I need to get confirmation from Verizon that this is occurring. Google said verizon is in charge of rolling out updates, not samsung or Google. Verizon told me that an update was coming to fix the issue but that the update was currently under review. The woman I spoke to said that Verizon was aware of the issue and had been working on an update to resolve all the problems since 4.0.4. So, the question is, do I roll the dice and keep my free phone, or return it to Best Buy and splurge on a S3 in a few months? I don't know who to trust.
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Sep 1, 2012 23:11
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On Terra Firma posted:Interesting development on the SGN front. I just spoke with Samsung, Google, and Verizon. Samsung said there could be an issue with crosstalk between towers that's causing the connection to fluctuate on my device, but that I need to get confirmation from Verizon that this is occurring. Google said verizon is in charge of rolling out updates, not samsung or Google. In a few months the SGS3 will have some sort of replacement. Honestly, My service hasnt been "that" bad on my gnex. If the battery lasted through a day i'd still be carrying it because jelly bean is worth losing some signal over to me. But I dont talk much, So its data+text 90% of the time and I live in a city with good coverage anyways. Only place my coverage is under average is my home which is odd considering im blocks away from the first LTE site here. whatever no phone gets signal in this house very well. I guess what im saying here is unless you buy a maxx as a replacement, The Gnex is my personal phone of choice. I chose a maxx over the SGS3 for what its worth. I burned my final unlimited data upgrade and the SGS3 was an option. Said gently caress it and couldnt be happier. If you want ROMZZZ and poo poo dont bother. Its a loving wasteland for anything good and since stock is pretty solid minus the bloat that you can uninstall/suspend anyways, gently caress it no point in risking anything when anything available is mostly poo poo. EbolaIvory fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Sep 2, 2012 |
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Sep 2, 2012 00:23
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There ARE some decent roms for the Verizon GS3 ('Beans', for example), and now that the bootloader's been unlocked, it's in the CyanogenMod 10 build plan too, which is stock JellyBean + extras.
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Sep 2, 2012 00:46
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Well, heres an interesting article http://lifehacker.com/5933152/the-right-to-tether-what-the-verizonfcc-settlement-means-to-you I should of put it in my previous post, but I finally found out that HTC phones have something called "hotspot lock" which blocks third party apps from making HTC phones into wifi hotspots. Is anyone familiar with removing that restrictive feature? Specifically for the HTC thunderbolt.
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Sep 2, 2012 01:41
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Is there any way that can be applied to any apps that Verizon blocks? Them blocking wallet is bullshit. And there are some other apps that have told me I can't have them because I have the wrong carrier.
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Sep 2, 2012 01:47
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Cojawfee posted:Is there any way that can be applied to any apps that Verizon blocks? Them blocking wallet is bullshit. And there are some other apps that have told me I can't have them because I have the wrong carrier. I'm pretty sure you can download wallet on Verizon. Just search for it on the desktop play store and send it to your phone. Worked for me.
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Sep 2, 2012 13:39
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AppleCobbler posted:I'm pretty sure you can download wallet on Verizon. Just search for it on the desktop play store and send it to your phone. Worked for me. I tried this last night. I think in the switch from Market to play store, they broke it. Getting to Wallet in the play app just tells me my device is incompatible.
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Sep 2, 2012 14:57
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Cojawfee posted:I tried this last night. I think in the switch from Market to play store, they broke it. Getting to Wallet in the play app just tells me my device is incompatible. Weird. Maybe it's because i already had the app? I can send you the apk if you want it.
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Sep 2, 2012 15:02
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I have the old version, but I sideloaded it so it was never part of the play store. You can send me the apk if you want, but I'm afraid I'll just have to keep doing this because I have to sideload. My email is my username at the gmails.
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Sep 2, 2012 15:04
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I would appreciate that APK too. My email is my username at gmail as well.
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Sep 2, 2012 15:34
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Crossposting from the android phone thread:Concurred posted:So I've got the option to get a Verizon concession line due to my place of employment. Right now I currently have a GNex with the T-Mobile Pre-Paid $30 a month 100 minutes / Unlimited Text / 5GB of data plan, but I can get 2000 minutes / Unlimited Texts / 5GB for only $40 a month.
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Sep 2, 2012 23:53
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Duckman2008 posted:Yeah, it seems buying a phone outright (probably eBay or Craigslist) is your best option. What phone are you looking at? If you travel a lot, the Razr Maxx would probably still be a decent amount used, but would do the trick battery wise. I'm using a Galaxy Nexus right now and it's absolutely perfect -- I'm not in any dire straits to upgrade or anything but with the Razr HD on the helm a potential nokia WP8 setup and a bunch of other poo poo hitting directly when my upgrade is available -- I figured I'd cross-shop either way.
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Sep 3, 2012 03:28
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