Thinking of buying an unlocked smartphone

I've been with wind for more than 2 years. It's awesome in the city (Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal) and works fine outside but you pay per text or call when on Wind away. I'm a contractor and having unlimited data is great for me. I rarely take jobs outside the city limits so rarely have problems.

I started with an HTC one. It was a great phone but died just passed the one year warranty. I've since bought the ASUS zenfone2. I'm very happy with it. It's a budget phone but specs wise, lines up with the OPO. ASUS just released a new phone with optical zoom camera that's supposed to be quite nice as well.

Oh and for traveling, the zenfone has 2 sim card slots so you can just buy a local sim or just run a pay as you go sim on the second one.

wprager wrote:Hey, what do you think of the Everywhere 45 plan at Wind.  You get 5GB full-speed data and unlimited talk/text to anywhere in Canada/US while on the Wind Home network (limited coverage), and then 2400 minutes and unlimited global texting on the "Away" network; data on the "Away" network is 5 cents/MB.

Between "Wind Home" and "Away" you get pretty much coverage everywhere in North America.  Too bad you get zero free data "Away"; typically if I'm traveling I have wifi access when indoors but not out.  I suppose, worst-case, you get a pre-paid SIM card wherever you go, or maybe they have some decent add-ons.

If you bring your own phone you get $5 off, so only $40.  Just occurred to be that $40 is what my wife's plan is, and it's unlimited (5GB at full speed) on just the home network; hmm, wonder if I could switch her.

My wife is on this plan. The jury's still out on Wind for me. For the most part, it's  been fine, but there's been a couple instances where she's had no reception at all, and there should've been at least a roaming network to connect to.

I got my son on the Wind $25 plan when he started volunteering for Rogers (community cable); very often he'd be across town and wouldn't know in advance when/where he needed to be picked up. Also sometimes he had to stay late at school. But we found out (a little too late) that his school (West Carleton) is actually in the "Away" zone (so extra cost), and some of the Rogers destinations were similarly "out-of-town". Looking at Barrhaven (where we will eventually move) it's a little dicey. Where my wife works (Leiken) she'll have coverage, but there are some areas in Barrhaven that are "Away".

Incidentally, Wind only has "Away" coverage in Montreal, so before I saw this plan I was actually looking at Mobilicity for myself (my mom is still in Montreal so I visit fairly often, and would need some kind of coverage). But Mobilicity's coverage in Barrhaven is even worse.

One thing I've found very odd with my wife's plan (it may be a Wind thing but I haven't heard my son mention anything): whenever I (or someone else) try to call her and she doesn't pick up (which is like 99% of the time) it actually ends up sending her a text message presumably coming from the number I used saying "I tried to call you ..." and then instructions on how to check voice mail and sign up for online billing. It's weird when I call her from the home number since our "land" line doesn't *have* text service, yet she gets text messages "from" home.

Anyhow, with lots of spam calls for sales at Northern Reflections and the like, her Message list is huge! And she never clears out old "Chats" which makes it worse.

I wonder if there is a way to disable this? If someone calls and doesn't leave a message, there's still the Call Log. Don't really need a text message.

I think it also sends her a text message when someone actually leaves a voice mail. Notification overload.

Oh, almost forgot what I came here for -- the plan is actually $45 even if you BYOD; the $5 is only applied against add-ons and not the $45 base monthly amount.

My son recently busted his phone and needed a replacement. He was on a pre-paid plan with Wind/Freedom paying $25/month for unlimited text and more local minutes than he would ever use, and no data. I figured he'd have to pay about $200 to get a decent replacement. I was definitely not against moving him to another provider (I recently moved the rest to Public for $25/month unlimited Canada-wide talk plus text plus 1G data; in addition we get $1 off for auto-top up and $2 for "referral" so it's really $22 for all but the last one, which is $24). I also wondered if there was a monthly plan which would get him a "free" phone, rationalizing spreading the $200 he was going to pay anyway over the 24-month period.

Ended up getting an LG G7 on a $45/month plan which includes 2G data plus unlimited Canada-wide talk/text There's also 100 LD minutes which he will never use. The deal also included $100 on my Optimum card for groceries.

So an extra $20/month works out to $280 over the two years. Subtract the $100 in groceries laving $180. So he's getting a new phone for $180 plus adding 2G data and much better coverage (Wind/Freedom was terrible0. The LG G7 is listed at $900. It's a 32Gb phone so it's not worth anywhere near $900, but still. Pretty good deals can be had out there. Much better than, say, 3 years ago.

Crap. I just realized $20x24 months is $480. And I thought I was good at math. Still, $380 (accounting for the points) and his plan upgrades to 2G data and better network. Not bad for a supposedly $900 phone.