Cellphone conundrum -- serious this time

[danaeris]

So it turns out that unseelie is on month to month with Sprint.

This impacts me because most of the talking we do is with each other, so we really should be on the same plan.

He could stay with Sprint... if he buys a contract before Jan 3, he can get nights and weekends starting at 7 p.m. I could glom onto his contract when mine expires June 5th. And Sprint carries the Treo 600.

Or, he could buy a one year contract with Verizon and glom onto my plan for $20/month, and we'd have unlimited minutes to talk to each other. But when my plan expires, one of the following would happen:
(1) I would re-up my contract and nothing would change for him.
(2) I would stay month-to-month until his contract expired and then we'd go somewhere else together
(3) I would ditch right away and he'd have to start paying $50/month for the anytime minutes we used to share, plus we wouldn't have unlimited minutes talking to each other.

Verizon does not carry the Treo 600. In fact, right now the only smartphones listed on their website are Microsoft Smartphones, which I'm just not interested in. I don't know if they'd interact with my MAC, but part of it is just a matter of principle. I'm beginning to wonder if they signed a contract with Microsoft to not begin carrying any more smartphones that don't run Microsoft Smartphone or Pocket PC.

Verizon seems to be hands down the best network out there, but if that's the case, I don't see much of a future with them. How much of a difference is there between network quality with Verizon vs. Sprint?

I don't want to have my Kyocera 6035 for another year, but the 7135 is available on Verizon and can be bought used in the $300 range, so if I committed to another year with Verizon I might upgrade to that and then again when I switched plans.

This is definitely a tough decisions. If you have anything to say about the following factors (or any other related factors) it would be very helpful:
(1) Sprint reception quality across the Bay Area (including isolated places like, say Rohnert Park where Sonoma State is)
(2) Verizon reception quality across the Bay Area (including isolated places like, say Rohnert Park where Sonoma State is)
(3) Sprint vs. Verizon reception
(4) Sprint or Verizon customer service, or the two compared
(5) the likelihood that Verizon will carry palm OS phones in the future (I know they have the Kyocera flip-phone (7135) now, but will they carry the next gen kyocera smartphone when it comes out, and will it be as nifty as the treo 600?)
(6) Just your opinion on what we should do

Geeky advice desperately needed/wanted!
A thought... The treo 600 with sprint is available for $250 with new plan through Amazon right now... I buy that for Unseelie, and then when my plan expires he goes back to his Kyocera 6035, and I get the treo 600? It's a thought.

Comments

[artistic-chaos.livejournal.com]

Verizon is the only service that works in Boulder Creek :)

[cos]

Verizon definitely has better coverage than anyone else, but the difference comes out mostly when you're away from the cities. In cities, I haven't had any problems with Sprint non-coverage. I took my Sprint Treo 300 with me when I was visiting SF in October, and don't remember anywhere in the bay area where reception wasn't good. It worked fine in San Rafael and Santa Cruz, and along I-80 all the way in from when I got down off the Sierra Nevada passes, through Sacramento and into SF. When catbird and I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, we did lose Sprint coverage for a while further south, and got it back before Santa Barbara. It got spotty again for a bit before Malibu, too.

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

I think each of the cellphone providers has a specific selling point. Verizon's is their network, which appears from both imperical and anecdotal evidence to be the best out there by far. Verizon's phones are dull; their customer service lacking to say the least (I've gone through hell with them, as have my parents). I haven't gotten the impression that Verizon really *knows* their phones are dull, nor cares if they do. They know people will go with them because A. the coverage and B. mobile to mobile minutes.

Sprint's main selling point is their nifty phones. Their calling plans, last I looked (which was a while), were horrible.

Cingular has some nice phones, but I think their main selling point is rollover minutes. I've heard their coverage is just nasty.

AT&T's main selling point appears to be that they're AT&T. Coverage, I hear, is adequate. As are their phones... not as dull as Verizon's, but not particularly thrilling either.

As to buying the phone now and using it yourself in 6 months... well that's a great price! But remember that in 6 months, the Superflua 7000 with collapsable widget and multi-doodad wizzamacallit will be out, and you'll probably want that instead.

you forgot T-mobile!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

pretty good phones, pretty good coverage, good calling plans, and EXCELLENT (in my experience) customer service. I left sprint because of the mediocre coverage and exceedingly crappy customer service and I love T-mobile.

not that that necessarily makes them the right choice for questioner. just putting in my $.02. T-mobile r0xx0rs.

Re: you forgot T-mobile!

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

Thanks for adding that. There's T-Mobile and a couple of others probably that I don't know much about, so didn't mention. Actually, with T-Mobile I did hear of a couple of people switching FROM them to Verizon because of what they felt was bad T-Mobile coverage.

[jrpseudonym.livejournal.com]

All I can say is that Verizon's coverage has a big ol' gap around Stanford University. But I'm pretty sure you already knew that...

[auros]

I have never had a problem with getting signal on my Sprint PCS phone, with the exception of when I was either in a basement, or one time when I was way the hell out in the boonies where none of my coworkers were getting signal on their T-Mobile or Verizon phones either. (We did a hike as a team-building thing; actually the only team building event I ever enjoyed.) I get the impression that Sprint's coverage of urban areas is pretty complete. I even get OK signal in Willow Glen, which (like Berkeley, and Stanford, apparently) is notorious for having poor coverage.

Also, I've heard horror stories about Verizon's customer service. I had some difficulty with Sprint when I was transferring service from Kivera's corporate account to me personally, but aside from that, it's been good -- when my old phone broke, getting the replacement (I pay the $4/mo insurance so if my phone is broken or stolen, I get a new one free) was basically painless.

[auros]

At least re: Fremont, when I was there a few weeks ago, I was able to call the person I was visiting for directions when I got lost. *g*

But yeah, Sprint's coverage is primarily concentrated in urban areas and along the highways connecting them.