Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

One of my nieces has a regular old feature phone and a Nexus 7 with cellular plan. This is a way to get smartphone functionality at a minimal cost because the cellular companies like to charge you more for smartphones as you have the convenience of all of the functionality in one device.

My wife and kids pay $8.33/month for their phone service and they have Nexus smartphones. My iPhone 5 is $56/month with 300 MB of cellular service on AT&T. If I want to do tethering, I have to get the 5 GB plan for $76/month. OTOH, I could do the AT&T $8.33/month prepaid Go Phone plan on the iPhone and pay $20/month for Verizon cellular (1 GB) on my iPad Mini which would provide me with tethering.

The main downside is that I'd have to carry the iPad Mini around with me but I have a jacket pocket that will hold it (it's actually designed for the full-size iPad).

It would be more convenient to just get a Verizon iPhone but the cost of something similar would be $80/month not including taxes and carrier fees. The iPhone plan would provide unlimited voice and text but I don't really use much voice and typically don't use text at all. What would be nice is if the carriers offered pricing that didn't assume unlimited voice/text and data pricing on smartphones that isn't obscene compared to what they charge on tablets.

BTW, I do real work on a PC like almost everyone else here.