Anyone have recommendations relating to Android phones?

[sraun]

I'm investigating the possibility of getting a smart phone. I'm currently on a pay-as-you-go plan from BoostMobile, we spend about $45/year on it. What I want for a smartphone is:

• Android


• Pay-as-you-go, preferably using BoostMobile


• All non-voice-phone functions usable over wifi

We ended up on BoostMobile for two reasons - it only required a payment every 90 days (as opposed to every 30 days for many of its competitors), and it's considered in-network for Sprint callers. My younger step-daughter and her husband are on Sprint, they are among the people most likely to be calling our cell, and it's free to them.

Every time I check, it looks like the minimum monthly data plan for a smartphone on any network is at least $50. We cannot justify that extra $500/year for what is, for us, a toy.

Would CyanogenMod give me the access-over-wifi requirement? Assuming the base phone does wifi, of course.

Anyone have any recommendations? Or pointers to a 'choose your smartphone' site that might help me identify one that meets my needs?

Comments

[norabombay]

VirginMobile (which is also a Sprint network, like Boost.)$35 a month for unlimited data/web/text, plus 300 minutes. It's only 3G, and you would have to buy one of the phones.

And I would check that was actually true before buying.

You aren't going to be able to upgrade to a data plan on anything other than a monthly payment basis- paying by the amount of data used is a nightmare.

I perhaps should not talk, as I dropped -down- to a $100 a month phone plan.

[norabombay]

My suggestion: Keep the phone and service you have. Get an old Android phone from somebody. You should be able to run the features over the wifi networks without having it activated on a cell network.

[anne]

Commenting from my HTC Incredible 2, which I love. But I slid in before Verizon changed its data rules.

One of my friends has a dumb phone and an iPod Touch. Might that be reasonable for you? I think she also has a MeFi, but I could be wrong.

[mmegaera]

What you're running up against is why I have a $15 a month pay-as-you-go dumb phone. There was absolutely no way I was paying $50 a month for a cell phone.

[ekaterin]

As far as I know, most Android phones have Wifi capability. And I used my smartphone for a year without a data plan. Mind, I live in Belgium, and it is very common over here to choose your phone and your network plan separately. That means that the phones are much more expensive, but we do not have to buy into a data plan at the same time.
My Android smartphone is the HTC Desire HD, and I am happy with it. HTC has a good name for well-designed phones with good support over here in Europe, including software upgrades.
To give some idea about budget Android smartphones: 4 recent models were tested, getting between 3 and 4,5 stars (out of 5). These were:
Acer Liquid Mini: 3
HTC Wildfire S: 3.5
Samsung Galaxy Ace: 3.5
SonyEricsson Live with Walkman: 4,5
(All these are for GSM-network, prices between €160 and €220)

[jekni]

We've just switched our phones from the iPhone 3GS to the Samsung Galaxy IIS and I'm getting fond of the beastie. Its WiFi is good and I find the SAMOLED screen very readable.