1) Sprint’s unlimited data plans are definitely going to be worth it if you’re frequently on the internet. Two smartphones on Sprints Everything Data Share 1500 plan would come out to $149.99 before taxes, which is the same price as Verizon’s Share Everything plan with 4GB of data shared between two smartphones. The main difference between these two plans would be that on Sprint’s Everything Data Share 1500 plan, you would have 1500 shared minutes between both phones, which will include Any Mobile, Anytime. What that means for you is that any calls you place to any cell phone on any wireless carrier will not use your minutes, and in addition to that, you will have unlimited nights and weekends starting at 7 PM. This will essentially mean that they only time you will use those anytime minutes is when you’re calling a landline phone from the hours of 7 AM to 7 PM from Monday through Friday. With Verizon’s plan, you would have unlimited minutes, however, then you would have to monitor data your data usage between two smartphones
2) Data is calculated based on how much information is actually downloaded to the phone. All carriers measure data in kilobytes and depending on what you use the internet for will depend on how many kilobytes you use. It is not measured in time increments. Example: viewing email with no attachments 20kb, web page look up 500 kb, streaming music about 60 mb/hr, streaming video about 250 mb/hr. To clarify, downloading information does not mean physically saving pictures or other media to your phone, as this can include anything from loading a webpage, to loading up the news feed on your Facebook app. Calculating that exact amount is a little more difficult, as it can vary depending on the content being downloaded as pictures and other media will generally use up more data. Pulling up a photo album on Facebook, for example, is going to be determined by how you view the photos, with less data being used by viewing the thumbnails of them instead of pulling up the full image. I will include a grid at the end of this e-mail that gives average amounts of data used for commonly performed actions on the web.
3) There are a number of high end smartphones I would recommend considering. A large part of smartphone choice is something that is based on personal preference. Personally, I own the EVO LTE, and it does a good job fitting all of my needs, however, not everyone may like that device based on few different features of the phone. Some of the high end phones that I would suggest considering would be the Samsung Galaxy S III, the LG Optimus G, the iPhone 5, the Galaxy Note II, the EVO LTE, and the Motorola Photon Q. I would recommend looking at these devices at a Sprint store, as it would give you the opportunity to get some hands on experience with the phones to see which device you would prefer.
4) The one downside to smartphones is that they are not nearly as durable as the dumb phones. In recent years, the screens have become more durable, but are still more susceptible to getting cracked compared to the dumb phones. If you’re concerned about possibly damaging or breaking the device, I would suggest looking into an Otterbox case for the device, as those cases are very durable and built to try and prevent any damage from being inflicted on your device.
Sorry about the novel