New Mobile Phone On The Way...

So I have been using...well, more like trying to use...a Palm Centro as my cell phone for the last 15 months or so. I initially got it because I wanted a smart phone with the ability to browse the internet and get sports scores and such. I was also interested in the touch screen and the full QWERTY keyboard that it offered.

For the first few months, I really liked it. It worked well and was just all around a solid device. However, after that first few months the thing just started to really go downhill. Things on it stopped working or taking forever to work. For instance, in the process of sending a 50 character text message I would have to stop every few characters and wait 10-15 seconds for the device to catch up with what I was doing. Or changing screens to get to the internet would sometimes take several MINUTES. These things were all things that I found incredibly frustrating and really were making me regret my choice of device.

So I decided that it was time to start looking for a new phone. I didn't really want to have to pay for one, so in browsing Verizon's site I found out that I was actually eligible for an upgrade of my current phone to a new phone for the current promotion price of the new phone. So basically, if they were currently offering a phone for $50 with a new contract I could get it for that. I started looking and found one that I liked quite a bit.

I ended up going with a phone by Samsung. I've never had a Samsung phone, I typically really like LG phones, but this one had 4 stars on Verizon's site...which is incredibly high considering most of their phones have like two stars. It also had 4 stars on CNET's web site, so I figured it had to be a pretty good phone.

I was able to get the phone in a pretty cool looking Flamingo Red color for absolutely nothing. The phone was free, and it included free overnight shipping, so it should be here on Tuesday. I'm not sure how much activation will be, but there was something on their website about Free Activation for the few days before Thanksgiving.

The new phone will be cool, and the best part is that I shouldn't use any of the functionality that I had before. I ended up keeping the text plan that I had, keeping the insurance, and going with the 25 megabyte data plan. So the phone should do everything that my Centro did, but the best part is it will cost $20 less per month than the Centro did. The Centro's text plan and insurance were the same price, but it's data plan was $30...the data plan for the Samsung is only $9.99. That should translate into even more savings because I'm sure all the random fees that Verizon charges will probably be a bit less, too.

This is what the phone looks like...the Samsung Intensity...