The missing cell phone, and thoughts on downgrading

Well, that's annoying.

I was at BioKinetic yesterday for a study physical, and while there made a call from my cell phone. Last night, when I was getting ready for bed, I couldn't find my phone to hook it to the charger—it wasn't in my pants, and when I turned the lights off and called myself via VOIP to look for a telltale glow (I'd had it on vibrate) I found nothing in my apartment. I called BioKinetic and they hadn't found it. I guess it might have fallen out in the car of the guy I got a lift to Planet Sub with afterward, or in the Planet Sub, or at the bus stop, or on the bus home.

This has gotten me to thinking, though. Maybe it's just as well I lost the phone. I've been paying upwards of $90 a month for cell phone service. My contract has expired and I haven't locked myself into another one yet. It occurs to me that, as relatively few calls as I make (and given that I use Google Voice + Gizmo 5 VOIP for most of them now), it's ridiculous that I keep paying that much for that service while I'm unemployed when I could probably get by easily enough with a much cheaper Pay-As-You-Go phone.

The only areas it would really hurt me are text messaging (I like to tweet by phone when inaccessible to wifi) and Internet usage (I check gmail and social-networking by phone when inaccessible to wifi). But to save that much money, I could probably cut back.

This plan from Boost Mobile looks like just about what I need: none of that ridiculous buy-a-card-every-30-days business, just a flat 10 cents per minute or per text message. No having to subscribe monthly for data usage of so many megabytes, just a flat 35 cents a day for unlimited usage, only charged for days on which I actually use it.

Maybe Boost wouldn't have quite as good network coverage as AT&T, but it's not as if I travel a lot at this point. And it would be very helpful to have that extra cash I'm not paying for a cell phone bill. I wonder if anyone has any advice to offer here.

The missing cell phone, and thoughts on downgrading

Well, that's annoying.

I was at BioKinetic yesterday for a study physical, and while there made a call from my cell phone. Last night, when I was getting ready for bed, I couldn't find my phone to hook it to the charger—it wasn't in my pants, and when I turned the lights off and called myself via VOIP to look for a telltale glow (I'd had it on vibrate) I found nothing in my apartment. I called BioKinetic and they hadn't found it. I guess it might have fallen out in the car of the guy I got a lift to Planet Sub with afterward, or in the Planet Sub, or at the bus stop, or on the bus home.

This has gotten me to thinking, though. Maybe it's just as well I lost the phone. I've been paying upwards of $90 a month for cell phone service. My contract has expired and I haven't locked myself into another one yet. It occurs to me that, as relatively few calls as I make (and given that I use Google Voice + Gizmo 5 VOIP for most of them now), it's ridiculous that I keep paying that much for that service while I'm unemployed when I could probably get by easily enough with a much cheaper Pay-As-You-Go phone.

The only areas it would really hurt me are text messaging (I like to tweet by phone when inaccessible to wifi) and Internet usage (I check gmail and social-networking by phone when inaccessible to wifi). But to save that much money, I could probably cut back.

This plan from Boost Mobile looks like just about what I need: none of that ridiculous buy-a-card-every-30-days business, just a flat 10 cents per minute or per text message. No having to subscribe monthly for data usage of so many megabytes, just a flat 35 cents a day for unlimited usage, only charged for days on which I actually use it.

Maybe Boost wouldn't have quite as good network coverage as AT&T, but it's not as if I travel a lot at this point. And it would be very helpful to have that extra cash I'm not paying for a cell phone bill. I wonder if anyone has any advice to offer here.