Good day all, Angry Webmaster here. As the Angry Systems Administrator mentioned the other day, he has ordered me a new Cellphone and it arrived late Friday. I now have a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S III and a new phone service.

As you might expect, I’m learning how the new phone works and playing with all sorts of applications. Originally, I had planned to wait a while before porting my phone number over to the new service, but I was very impressed with it and the reasonable costs of the plan. Previously, I was using AT&T with a corporate discount I picked up on a contract job in 2006.

I had to go through the usual 2 year plan and when it expired I didn’t renew it. I grew attached to not being attached and when the time came a few years ago for a new phone, I had the Angry Systems Administrator find me a good unlocked one. The one I got served me well for several years, but I was finding myself having more and more issues that could have been handled on a smartphone that required me to go on a laptop or desktop. So we made the decision to get me a smartphone.

There were several reasons I waited as long as I did before getting a smugphone smartphone. First was the lack of choices way back when. All you could get was an Apple Iphone and I detest Apple’s overpriced, locked down junk. Now, you have other choices such as the Android and Windows phones. I went with the Android system, specifically a Samsung Galaxy S III with 32GB of storage on board. I also like the 8 megapixel camera. My old phone had a 5 megapixel camera and it took fairly good pictures. I didn’t chose a Windows phone because, well, I deal with Microsoft Windows all day long and I have no interest in seeing the Blue Screen of Death appear when I’m talking to Mrs. Webmaster.

Another reason I held off getting a smartphone was costs of the service. As anyone who owns a smartphone and uses one of the major phone companies knows, their idea of a deal is transferring all your money into their bank accounts. They also have started limiting data plans and their customer service is not noted for being customer friendly. As I mentioned previously, I used AT$T for years with a basic plan and a plain old feature phone. When I started my current Real World Job, I had to have text messaging enabled for all the alerts I get. The company paid for the text messaging and I paid for the phone service. I’ll let you do the math.

There was no way in Hell I was going to use AT$T, Veri$on or the others. I like putting money in MY bank account, not the phone company’s bank account. About a year ago I heard an ad for a new company on one of the Twit.TV podcasts for a phone service called Ting.com. I told the Angry Systems administrator about it and we started looking into it. Last summer I mentioned the service to one of my coworkers in my Real World Job about it. Since he was looking at writing phone apps and wasn’t interested in the Iphone, he took a look at it and got a basic smartphone and plan. He was quite happy with it since it allowed him to develop and test his apps and not run up a massive bill. Right now, according to the Ting Dashboard, my expected bill for one month is $15.00. Ting’s system is very different from the other companies. Basically, you pay for what you use. When the Angry Systems Administrator did his planning, he estimated that the cost would run roughly $33.00/mo. That’s with 500 minutes of talk time, (50 more then I had with AT$T), 500MB data plan and 1000 text messages. If I use less, we pay less, and since money is tight thanks to the Obama Tyranny, less is best.

Ting uses the Sprint network for it’s backhaul. I don’t have a lot of experience with Sprint’s network, but it looks pretty good for my needs. I will miss not having a GSM phone. (Sprint, like Verizon uses the CDMA system) One of the reasons I went with AT$T years ago was because of the GSM system. I expected to be traveling to and from China a lot more then I have and wanted to be able to buy a sim card and use the phone over there. However, the plans of Mrs. Webmaster and myself didn’t allow me to travel over there as much as I wanted to, so having a GSM capable phone became a moot point.

I have to say I’m rather happy with the Angry Systems Administrators choice. I guess that means I’ll have to pay him this week. I have to make a few decisions with regards to the phone and my Real World Job’s email system. I can plug into it, but it means letting them have some access to it. (So they can remote wipe it) The company will also pay for the service, and since this plan is much cheaper than going with the standard carriers, it should make the corporate bean counters happy. So, if you are looking for a new phone and a cheap service, take a look at Ting.com and see if they will work for you. I think we made a good choice here, although paying the nearly $600 for the phone was painful. Well, if you want a subsidized and locked down tight phone, go with the major carriers, The phone will be cheaper but you will be paying through the nose for the phone service.