Friday, July 20, 2012

iphone introduction

Alrighty, I’ve had my new iPhone (4S, 16 GB, white) for a week now and I’m in love!  Like one of my readers, Lizzie, commented, it’s so intuitive to use, I can’t believe I didn’t make the change sooner.  I’m sure a good majority of readers have smart phones, so I’ll try to bore you too much with this post (since you probably learned what I’m learning over a year ago), but there are some things I do want to share.
Verizon’s Shared Data Plan: The conversion of shared data plans, instead of shared minutes, is what instigated the consideration of getting an iphone and doing some research on how the new plan format would affect my family.  I shared my findings from Father’s Day weekend, prior to the plan change and last weekend I found out everything I’d previously learned (and shared) was wrong.

When a current costumer has an available upgrade, they had choose if they want to stay on the shared minutes plan, or change their plan to shared data.

o   If you change your plan to shared data, anyone who currently has unlimited data (this ended last summer, but the then current unlimited customers were grandfathered in and still get to keep their unlimited data), will lose their unlimited data

o   On the shared data plan; the base payment includes unlimited calls and texts and however much data you choose.  On top of that you’ll pay $40 a month per smart phone on the account and $30 per month for basic phone.

o   For my family, we looked at sharing 6GB/month for 4 people at $100 for the base.  Three of the four iPhones (now on our account) also have insurance at $10 each per month.  Thus on the new shared data plan; we’d be $100 + (4*$40) + (3*$10) = $290 per month!

o   Keeping our current plan of 1,400 shared minutes and unlimited texts (btw, our family only used 200 minutes last billing statement since Verizon customers, calls after 7pm and on weekends are free), to get our family all on iphones (3 having insurance), we’ll pay $160 (this was the cost with my mom and sister having their phones already) + $40 (My dad’s phone: $30/month for 2 GB data and $10/month for insurance) + $23 (My phone: a $20 increase to data since my old phone was $10/mo; and another $3/mo for insurance difference since I paid $7/mo on my old phone); thus for our family of four to all have iphones, 3 of us with 2 GB EACH per month and one with unlimited data, plus 3 with insurance, we’ll pay $223; approximately $70 cheaper than the new data plan! How crazy is that?! Plus with my sister getting to keep her unlimited data, we get waaaay more data as a total. 

Moral of the story: if you’re eligible for an upgrade - consider a smart phone; I’d look into changing it while you can still be grandfathered in under the old shared minutes plan.

I ordered a case online; I’ll posted about it when it arrives because I’m super excited and in the meantime, I’m borrowing a case from a friend.


I’ve gotten most of the basic apps we have on our ipad and that I like:

o   Facebook

o   Twitter

o   Instagram

o   Kindle

o   IMDB: You know how much I love movies!

o   Pinterest

o   Blogger

o   Pandora

o   Soundhound:  Listens to songs play and identifies them for you

o   Starbucks: This is a duh! Although I haven’t paid with my phone yet

o   Transit Stop:  A train and bus tracker for Chicago’s public transit, CTA

o   Waze: Rec’d by a friend; gives directions

o   Yelp

o   Evernote:  Organizer rec’d by my SIL, but I haven’t messed with it much yet

o   LogosQuiz:  A game I was introduced to on our way to Texas that I’m now obsessed with


I still should get Angry Birds too; although I’m kind of over that.  What are your favorite apps and what else do you recommend I get??

Lastly, the other thing I learned last night is how to “kill” your open applications.  If you double click your home button, at the bottom of your screen, all of your open applications will appear.  Just like deleting an app from your phone, hold your finger down on the application that you want to close.  The icons will start to shake and the red circle delete will appear.  Click it to close the app.  Closing out your apps will help your battery life last longer!

I also have a few pins on my Things to Know and Remember board regarding iphones.  I suppose I need to read through those!  Do you have any other helpful hints for iphones?

4 comments:

  1. So glad that you're loving your new phone!
    Some apps that I love are:

    Overdrive - so that I can check out e-books and audiobooks from my library

    Viggle - you earn points by checking in to tv shows and can redeem those points for gift cards at places like Starbucks, Amazon, Old Navy

    Etsy has a fun app, as does Sephora

    Bejeweled Blitz - a fun game to play while standing in line

    Yelp and/or Urbanspoon are great apps too because they can use your position to find restaurants, bars, shopping around you!

    I hope you enjoy it, and I'm sure, like me, you will discover some new feature, or some great new app on a regular basis.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My 2 fav apps are:
    Myfitnesspal--great way to watch your calorie intake and what you burn off throughout the day.

    Beat the traffic--it shows the current traffic patterns based off of Google maps.

    My husband is trying to wait for the iPhone 5 to come out and I am grandfathered into an unlimited data plan, it's good to know that we do not have to switch to the new shared data plan after all!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 25, 2012

    I just looked on Verizon and to switch to a plan with a shared 4G is $40 more a month. I just got my phone in April and was able to get the 4G for 2G deal for my phone. Not that I come close to using that amount, by why would I want to switch to a shared plan at an extra $40??

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the app suggestions!

    Ha, anon...I don't really understand the advantage of the shared data plans at this point; you can have MORE data on the "old" plan and spend LESS money too.

    ReplyDelete

Blogging tips