Best Phones & Plans
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COVER STORY Best phones & plans Here’s how to get the best cell-phone deal amid changing choices ore competition among survey of Consumer Reports readers. Inside phones, especially sophisti- AT&T is now positioned in last place over- Operating Smart-phone cated smart phones. More all and in almost every market we rate. systems Ratings varied service options, in- Verizon Wireless is no longer the clear Mcluding more phones and plans that don’t for phones Page 32 Page 28 require a contract. A change in regulatory Cell-phone approach from Washington that promises AT&T scored Prepaid Ratings to end some problems with carriers, such phones Page 34 lowest in almost as unexpectedly high bills. Could the cell- Page 29 Cell-service phone market finally be turning in favor every respect. New smart Ratings of consumers? phones look Pages 32-37 This special report aims to bring you up top dog in overall satisfaction with our sub- promising to date on a fast-changing marketplace, scribers, a position it held in most years 911 calls on Page 29 outline the choices in phones and plans since 2003. This year, the carrier that re- cell phones geared to your priorities, and suggest ways spondents were most satisfied with, at least Find the best fit Page 38 you can pay less and get more. for service under a contract, was U.S. Cel- Page 30 How to We begin with more on the important lular. It serves 26 states, half of them in the Cell-phone conserve new developments in wireless and what Midwest, and is new to our Ratings. Sprint radiation battery life they might mean to you: has pulled even in overall satisfaction with Page 31 Page 38 AT&T is now the worst carrier. AT&T Verizon, and T-Mobile is close behind. Two was the only carrier with scores that or even three of those top carriers are statis- dropped significantly in our satisfaction tically tied in satisfaction in a majority of TATCHEVA EVA BY ILLUSTRATION 26 consumer reports january 2011 the 23 cities in which we rated service. Among no-contract carriers, Consumer Cut your cell-phone costs Cellular scored highest for satisfaction. iPhone rivals come on strong. Though Buy your phone at Costco. Don’t overbuy minutes. a fine phone in most respects, the newest This warehouse store was the only In our 2009 survey more than version of the Apple/AT&T smart phone, 1 retailer to receive top marks for 5 a third of respondents with the iPhone 4, can have reception problems price and service in a 2009 Consumer allotments of minutes used half or less of Reports survey of places to buy cell what they paid for. That’s because the if held in a certain way in an area with a phones. As an example of Costco’s prices, monthly fee also buys lots of “free” night, weak signal. But that isn’t the only iPhone we found the Verizon Motorola Droid X weekend, in-network wireless, and concern. Our survey data, reflecting all for $100 at Costco.com, compared with calling-list minutes. versions of the phone, found that iPhone $300 with a $100 rebate at a Verizon Review the voice minutes you have owners were, by far, the least satisfied store. (In high-tax California, you’d save used and not used in the past six with their carrier. They rated their data about $19 on sales tax, too, because it’s months. You might be able to switch to a service (Web and e-mail) lower than did calculated before rebates are applied.) plan with fewer billable daytime/ owners of other carriers’ smart phones anytime minutes, provided it offers the Monitor use and act as needed. same free talk-time benefits. that, like the iPhone, have a host of apps To avoid being among the one in five that encourage heavy data use. 2 readers who got higher-than- Avoid termination fees. The iPhones did well in our tests, but expected bills, often for going over their Sixteen percent of our readers our Ratings also list other high-scoring plan limit, check your use midway through 6 with a contract wanted to switch phones from carriers with higher satis- the billing cycle via Settings on your carriers but didn’t want to get hit with phone. Pageonce.com sells smart-phone early-termination fees that can run as faction scores than AT&T. Some of them, apps that monitor usage and send you a high as $350 per phone early in the including the HTC Evo 4G and Samsung text or e-mail warning about overages. contract term. (Penalties gradually Galaxy S models (the Fascinate, Epic, Vi- If you’re going to exceed your decline the further along you get in brant, and Captivate, all recommended) allotment, temporarily switch to a the contract term.) even beat the iPhones in some respects higher-limit plan backdated to the start Instead, consider transferring your and have larger screens. And more possi- of the billing cycle. If you’ve already contract to someone else for a $20 to $25 ble standouts are in the wings. (See received a shocking bill, don’t emulate fee through Celltradeusa.com or “These New Smart Phones Look Promis- the 9 percent of survey respondents who Cellswapper.com. To avoid being stuck simply paid an unexpectedly high bill with a disappointing carrier, test the ing,” page 29.) without a peep. phone and service during the 15- to Conventional phones get smarter. Call the carrier and ask to have the 30-day trial period, when you can quit Last year, about a third of the conventional penalties reduced or removed. That and port your number to another carrier cell phones in our Ratings had a touch worked for 36 percent of the bill-shocked without penalty. screen, which is almost standard on smart group; only 10 percent of them were Weigh monthly costs, too. phones. This year closer to half the conven- unsuccessful. Of the remaining The purchase price of the phone, tional phones have a touch screen to help respondents, 3 percent were waiting for the dispute to be resolved, and 7 percent especially a smart phone, can be you navigate to websites or open apps. 7 had other outcomes. a surprisingly small contributor to So-called smart features track with the total cost of owning it over, say, changing use patterns. Almost all respon- Check employee discounts. a two-year period. That’s especially true dents to our survey still made at least some AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, for T-Mobile smart phones, which you voice calls on their cell phone, but 75 per- 3 and Verizon offer discounts to the can buy with or without a contract, at cent used it to send or receive text messag- employees of companies that use their differing prices and fees. service. To see whether you qualify, For example, with a T-Mobile es, and half used it for access to the Internet Google the carrier’s name and “employee contract, you get two new Motorola Cliq or personal e-mail. discount,” and navigate to the Web page XT smart phones free. Two years of At least one downside exists to the ris- that asks for your work e-mail address. unlimited talk, text, and data service ing sophistication of conventional cell Discounts can be as high as 20 percent, costs $4,320. Without a contract, you phones. Almost all smart phones require though some deals exclude the Apple pay for the phones but equivalent data service, and some also require a mes- iPhone or certain service plans. monthly service costs less, so the saging plan. Some of the higher-rated two-year total is $4,020, a saving of Weigh Walmart Family Mobile. conventional phones in our Ratings also $300. But if you buy those Cliq XTs from Though we lacked sufficient data Walmart Family Mobile, a partner with require a messaging service (AT&T) or a 4to rate it, consider this service, a T-Mobile, you pay less for the phones data plan (Verizon) even if you don’t want partnership between T-Mobile and the and comparable no-contract service. The it. The AT&T messaging plan costs $20 per retailer. It offers a few T-Mobile phones total for two years is $2,420, far less than month and up, and the Verizon data ser- running on T-Mobile’s network. Some of either T-Mobile option. vice runs $15 to $30 per month. the phones and service plans cost less than at T-Mobile. If Walmart doesn’t have Consider a family plan. If you Data plans are moving away from the the phone you want, conventional or need four cell lines, for instance, all-you-can-eat flat rates that have been smart, you can buy one at the no- a family plan can save through the norm. New smart-phone data services 8 contract price from T-Mobile and transfer shared minutes and add-a-line prices from AT&T are sold only in metered pack- it to a Walmart Family Mobile plan, the that tend to be lower than fees for ages of 200 megabytes or 2 gigabytes per carrier’s spokesman said. separate lines. phone and expire at the end of each january 2011 www.ConsumerReports.org 27 COVER STORY BEST PHONES & PLANS month. The new Walmart Family Mobile phone without a contract; Verizon doesn’t. brand of T-Mobile services sells data in The big-name carriers are offering more 200MB, 500MB, and 1GB bundles, which no-contract plans and phones —sometimes can be shared by all phones on the account under separate brands, such as Sprint’s and don’t expire until they’re used up.