A Guide to Buying a Cell Phone

Buying a cell phone can be a stressful process. Customers who are new to the wireless world of cellular technology may find all the different phones, service providers, and plans confusing. Cell phone plans can vary greatly, and likewise, so can their prices. In the following I will give you an over view of the various options to consider when you are looking to buy a cell phone and service.

To start at the beginning, you should think about what you need from your service provider before buying a cell phone. Will you be using the phone a lot, or only for emergencies? If you are using the phone often, you will probably want to go with a contract phone. If you will barely use it at all, or if you have poor or nonexistent credit, then you should probably consider getting a prepaid  phone. The main difference between these two options is that with a prepaid phone you can stop paying for it whenever you want, whereas with a contract phone you will be signing up for a 2 year contract, and if you want to get out of the contract before it is over you will be subjected to a hefty early termination fee.

When you consider your service provider, whether it be for a contract or prepaid deal, you need to asses various requirements. While some services may be less expensive, you will probably have less coverage – meaning the phone will not always work everywhere. However, some companies charge a premium because they have great coverage but their internet speeds may be unbearably slow (AT&T, I’m looking at you on this one!). This means that you need to think about what you will be using the phone for. If you are just making phone calls, then get the best coverage for the best price. If you need faster data, you may choose to sacrifice better coverage for that.

Finally the fun part – picking your phone! Buying a cell phone and, more importantly, buying a cell phone that is right for you, will probably require you to do a bit of research on all the options that are available. There are a ton of new phones hitting the market every week and to sift through to find the one that’s going to work for you, you may need to do a bit of digging. The first thing to decide is whether you want a basic phone or a smart phone. Smart phones are more capable, can do things like display the internet and email more like it appears on your regular computer, and are usually faster and have many applications available. However, they will be more expensive. If you are not looking to do all the things a smart phone or PDA is capable of, you should still consider what other features you want to have. For example, if you want to text a lot you should get a phone with a qwerty key board. Other options you can consider when buying a cell phone are whether or not it has a good camera, touch screen, slider vs flip phone vs candy bar phone, and so on. A lot of phones which don’t fall into the PDA or smart phone category will often be strong in one area and weak or average in another, so you may get a great keyboard with a terrible camera. It all depends on what you want to get when buying a cell phone.

I hope this quick guide gave you some insight into what to consider when buying a cell phone! As a quick recap, remember that there are 4 major considerations when buying a cell phone: Contract VS prepaid, Service provider, Smart phone VS standard phone, and finally the core features available.