Truly Unlimited No-Contract Data Plan with Beyond Talk

In our current world the US Carriers have liberally thrown the word Unlimited around which actually means anything but.

Unlimited for AT&T and Verizon (and even Skype) has limits when you read the fine print.  Whether its a fair use policy (6 hours a day as in the case of Skype) or an outright cap at 5GB (as in the monthly AT&T and Verizon caps) its refreshing to see a plan coming out of a no-contract service that truly means no-capped, no small print Unlimited, on the cheap.

VirginMobile USA announced a series of plans with the name Beyond Talk which are very interesting for a number of reasons.

iPhone App Picks #1

I've had an iPod Touch First Generation since 2008 but I never really took to it.  I hated fighting iTunes and apps for the iPhone would not work on my iPod for one reason or another.  It lacked Bluetooth and I was constantly spending money to upgrade it's software ($20 a couple of days after I bought it -- what a rip off).

Instead I used a Samsung P2 8 GB Touchscreen Bluetooth Portable Media Player which you can now pick-up for $90 at Amazon and I loved my P2 for two long years.  By now Samsung has what they call the P3 Palm Theatre Plus 8 GB MP3 Player available which is a great iPod alternative for $150.

But a couple of weeks ago I bought a third generation (3G: not to be confused with an iPhone 3G on the 3G AT&T network) iPod Touch 8GB for $180 at Best Buy.  You can get an 8GB 3G from Amazon for about $175.  I started using it and I have not looked back.

The 3G is wonderful.  The hardware is great but what makes the platform shine are the apps.  But there are so many apps.  So many that I thought I'd start a new series called my "iPhone App Picks." The iPod Touch uses the same OS as the iPhone (and upcoming iPad) so any app that can run on the iPhone can run on your iPod Touch.  A few exceptions exist having to do with the camera which is only on the iPhone.  With the built-in WiFi you can use an iPod Touch just like an iPhone as long as you have a hotspot.

My five top totally free apps avaialble at the App Store.

Windows Phone 7 Series

The name may not be great.  We are used to saying Windows Mobile and now Microsoft dropped Mobile from the name because they want us just to call them Windows Phones.  They want us to associate it with the rocking Windows 7 although its more Zune than Win7.  

Whatever the reason is the momentum is building up to what amounts to a great looking alternative to the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry phones.  Shown at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona a week back WP7S is scheduled for an X-mas 2010 release.  This Zune Phone appears to sport a new interface of lists on a canvas that you scroll across.

I will be wondering until then whether I can install this on my Samsung Code.  I'll probably want/need another phone in order to take advantage of the software.  Otherwise, it would be like installing the iPhone OS on an iPod Classic instead of the Touch.

For now watch the Windows Phone 7 Series Features Video:

  

Samsung Code Tethering

With MetroPCS you not only get Unlimited Voice but data as well.  Data that you can use not just to do unlimited texting and web browsing but to power internet applications like Skype, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, essentially any type of internet activity.

If you could connect a laptop to your phone and use your phone as a modem then you could have unlimited internet on your laptop.  That is called tethering and you can easlity set it up on your Samsung Code from MetroPCS.

To see this in action watch the video:

Windows Mobile Security

I received the following great question from chislady on YouTube:

i was wondering since its like a comupter [sp] canit get virus n should i like install a fire wall or some thing n if so could u make a video about it thanks plz

My short YouTube response was:

Great question! Microsoft publishes six rules on protecting your Windows Mobile phone since you are right this is a pocket Windows computer and hence hackable.

Now here are the six points which I will go into detail on each that should keep your new Samsung Code safe and sound.

Code vs. Curve (MetroPCS)

Now that MetroPCS has released an awesome smartphone in the Samsung Code I have been getting questions on how the Blackberry Curve from MetroPCS compares to the MetroPCS Samsung Code. I myself have been waiting for the Curve to hit NYC for MONTHS before I finally gave up and went with the Unlimited Sprint Blackberry Curve 8330. I liked the phone but I wasn't in the aisle cheering either. Plus with Sprint I was paying $100 for Unlimited Voice, Text, and Data.

The Curve as a phone was good but not great. You could tell that it was an email device (an excellent email device) that had a phone jacked into it versus the other way around. It never overheated though and the call quality and battery life was superb. One thing that annoyed me was I could not conference in a person who called me. I needed to call both parties to conduct a three-way. So there were many times when I had to say "okay, let me call you back" to conference. Argh. Not so with the Code. I cancelled my Sprint contract the minute the Code was at my local BestBuy ($190 charge but I'll make that up in four months on Metro).

I knew not to go on contract given my obsession with phones but at the time $100 for the Unlimited Curve at Sprint was the best deal out there (better than AT&T, Verizon, and even T-Mobile) and it sounded like a great deal given Metro didn't seem to be coming out with anything for my market. I was wrong on that. Now the Code has become my only phone. Texting, data, and voice all excellent. Call quality excellent. In one and a half months I have put close to 80 hours on the phone (that's close to 4800 hours). Now the email on the Code is nowhere as good as the Blackberry. The built-in email comes in quick (I use pull not push) but seems to get erased after a couple of days. I need to investigate better email clients of which there seem to be many for the platform.

If you haven't heard Microsoft's MyPhone is an amazing web-based automatic back-up mechanism for the Windows Mobile device providing not just a back-up of your contacts, pictures, music, tasks, calendar, whatever but also location based functionality and a way to erase the phone remotely if you lose it. Besides backing up your phone automatically you can also share photos on your favorite social networking sites, access your contacts on the web, send text messages online for free, and locate your lost phone. That itself is a priceless features which comes for free (200MB limit) thanks to the Redmond team. My pick is the Code over the Curve. Its also $50 cheaper: Code (250), Curve (300).

Samsung Code Apps (MetroPCS)

The Samsung Code SCH-i220 has a talk time of 6 hours and a standy time of 12.5 days. It makes use of a thin 1440 mAh Li Ion battery and has a screen size of 320×240 pixels with 65k colors. It weighs only 3.6 ounces.

I have not connected it to a PC yet but have loaded plenty of software apps on it via the web.

My top nine apps are:

1. Email

2. Calendar

3. Media player: I download podcasts from websites as if I were on a desktop. I could never do this on a Blackberry.

4. Photos (2M camera)

5. GTalk via Palringo

6. Skyfire browser: like Chrome url bar & search combined.

7. YouTube

8. Twitter via Pocketwit

9. Facebook

I demo these 9 apps in the following 9 minute video: