Vanessa and I got into the $25 a month Virgin mobile no-contract plan with 300 minutes of talk and unlimited internet. We scurried to get Android phones as this deal is going up to $35. (I see that people are still getting the hidden $25 plan as of today.) I don’t think phone companies that force you to continue as a customer with a contract can compete anymore. You can get 400 minutes of voice for $20 a month without a contract. Yeah, you have to buy the phones, but it’s still cheaper in the long run.
We are also using Google Voice. It’s a free service where Google assigns you a phone number and it becomes your “one phone number to rule them all”. It can forward to any other phone number or several at once. You can do free text messaging and it even attempts to turn voicemail into text.
Anyway, we’ve had a blast playing with Android. Now I understand why some people post pictures to facebook and other places so much…it’s very easy if your camera can just upload it after you take the picture.
There are phone apps (programs) for just about anything: home automation, social, navigation, flashlight, streaming music, games, and wi-fi analyzer.
Another fun part of Android is voice commands. Tap the little microphone on the home screen and speak any of these commands:
- send text to [contact] [message]
- listen to [artist/song/album]
- call [business]
- call [contact]
- send email to [contact] [message]
- go to [website]
- note to self [note]
- navigate to [location/business name]
- directions to [location/business name]
- map of [location]