Of Smartphones and 'senior' plans!

[lparsons21]

I'm in the market to change my cell service. Currently I have T-Mobile and the plan I'm on is great from a financial standpoint, but the service isn't all that good in my area. Talk/Text coverage is OK around here, but there are some gaping holes in the coverage, but data is all at 2G. The plan I'm on is $30/month for 1500 talk/text and 300mb data. Those amounts are just fine for what I do, or at least what I do with the phone and service I have now.

So I started looking at 'Senior' plans. AT&T and Verizon both have plans for those 65 and older. 200 anytime minutes, 500 night/weekend, unlimited mobile-to-mobile on their network. Both will allow for Smartphones, though Verizon in much more vague about it on their website. So far this is what I've learned.

Both AT&T & Verizon have great coverage here, both have 4G LTE? service in this area. Both cost about $60/month for the 'senior' plan, plus the minimum data they allow for the smartphone. 2Gb for Verizon, 3Gb for AT&T.

Are there other services I should consider that have similar plans?

I'm also very tossed on which phone to get. I've looked at and like the idea of the iPhone and wonder just what I'll miss if I took the free iPhone 4 over the 4S or 5. I'm mostly Mac oriented at home, so that is a strong contender as they would integrate the best.

But then, my eyes ain't what they used to be, so a bigger phone has a certain allure also. I looked at the HTC 8X and Nokia 920 Windows 8 phones and liked both of them. Does anyone know how well they hold up for the long haul? Android isn't out of the picture, but it isn't a strong contender as I'm not overly enamored of my HTC Wildfire. But there are some nice phones there, and maybe even a 'phablet' is something to consider??

Any ideas and suggestions are certainly welcome and encouraged.

thanks.

 

[lparsons21]

Well this got a lot of suggestions!

Ended up with an iPhone5 and Verizon's senior plan.

 

[Anole]

I didn't realize we were on deadline!

I got a used iPhone 4, and put it on StraightTalk, (bring your own phone / pay as you go) for $45/mo, no extra taxes nor fees.
Unlimited talk, unlimited text, couple gb of data. (free 411, though I don't use it)
Been running it a year and very happy.
It is on the AT&T network which I've been on a decade anyway

 

[lparsons21]

I didn't know it either!

But it rained and I couldn't get to the golf course...

I came very close to buying a used iPhone 4 on Ebay and doing the same thing. But in the end if I was going to get a new phone, I decided I wanted the latest version of whichever I went with and that was cost prohibitive since the latest of any of the more upscale phones go for fairly big bucks. AT&T's network was 2nd choice in my case as Verizon and Alltel have the best coverage in this area. But Alltel's data isn't very good.

So the iPhone 5 was $199, coupled with a $60/month plan for seniors that has 2Gb of data (4G/LTE) which is more than good enough for me.