I'm not knowledgeable about smartphones (I just use a cheap flip phone myself that came with my phone plan), and someone requested me to look into smartphones for them despite my unfamiliarity.

He's passively interested in a Samsung Reverb, but I see alot of Amazon.com reviews saying that a recent Android firmware update basically broke the phone (requiring the phone to be manually restarted several times a day by removing and reinserting the battery).

What's a decent Android smartphone that functions well, and isn't too expensive (relatively speaking)?

He's going to be roaming alot, in the United States and possibly abroad, and he's not currently in a contract with any specific provider.

I really have no clue where to even start with this (and he knows that already). Samsung is the dominate non-Apple smartphone manufacturer, so I figured I'd look at Samsung's recent offerings (though the Reverb was only released a year ago, and apparently it's already almost bricking itself).

My priorities are:

1) It works. It makes phone calls and can text. It doesn't require alot of hassle (He's smart and computer knowledgable, but wouldn't want something he has to fight against).

2) It gets service in most cities / towns in the US and even some abroad.

3) It should last at least 2 years; ideally, the carrier + phone should (compared to other options) be not too expensive over the total-cost-of-ownership during those two years.

Which carriers have the best coverage on the US coasts (East, West, and South), and have decent international service?

In the current state of the market, it better to get prepaid phones, or to sign a contract?

There's just too much information (and deliberate misinformation on the part of the carriers) to parse all at once, so while I'm doing the research, I thought I'd pick your brains for any knowledge you might already have.

Oh, and how much data should one expect to use on a smartphone? How much do you use, monthly? Obviously it varies from person to person and from app to app, but I'm looking for a ballpark figure to be better informed while browsing carrier plans.

Consider the device and the carrier as two distinct transactions.

There are hundreds of devices out there to choose from. Selecting a good device is much like selecting a good PC; what is best for one person may be a poor choice for someone else. Devices vary on processor speed, graphics cards, main memory, video memory, storage space, and other factors in exactly the same manner that a PC does.

Just like in the PC world, I'm confident everyone would love to get the processing power an 10-core/20-thread E7-8870 Xeon processor, or if you can't afford a Xeon instead getting a 6/12 i7-990X desktop-class processor. But this computer would be expensive, and it would be overkill for someone just surfing the web. The same with choosing a phone. Picking the right phone is a matter of budget and realistic needs.

Then once you have picked out the phone, pick the carrier and the plan.

Find the carriers with good coverage in the area you plan on using it. Figure out how much the person will talk, how much they text, and how much data they consume. Then look over all the carrier's plans that meet those service requirements.

Some people love to get an "unlimited everything" plan, but that costs $80 or more per month. I have a plan with 100 minutes of voice, essentially unlimited text messages, and 5GB of data, and that costs $30 per month. That inexpensive plan is far cheaper and because it meets all my requirements it is indistinguishable from 'unlimited' for me. But if you have someone who spends many hundreds of hours talking the plan would be an extremely bad fit.

Most carriers have no-phone plans available. Instead of buying your phone from the carrier, having the phone that is tied to the carrier, and paying the carrier a monthly fee FOREVER that allows you to eventually buy another phone tied to the carrier, many carriers have less expensive plans that do not require you to buy the phone through them. Not only do you end up paying less overall for the "free" phone, these plans generally do not have x-year contract requirements and are much cheaper in the long run.

Thanks, that definitely helps and makes more sense of the information I was finding when looking into it.

Is contractless is the same as "prepaid"? Or are you talking about the "rolling contracts" (looking at Wikipedia).

What carrier are you getting 5GB of data at only $30 a month? The lowest I'm seeing are $50 and $60 a month (and yes, they are unnecessarily "unlimited" with the minutes).

In general with smartphones, when connected to a WiFi hotspot, that doesn't count toward your monthly data usage, right?

In general with smartphones, when connected to a WiFi hotspot, that doesn't count toward your monthly data usage, right?

Correct.

As to phones, I recommend the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They're dropping in price quite a bit now, but are still pretty beefy for a phone. The best thing about them in my opinion is that you get the Samsung hardware, but without all their custom software. They're designed to be rooted and modded so it's easy to install one of the various custom builds that give extra battery life and make the phone run even smoother. And I mean easy as in there's a GUI app that can pretty much do it all for you with just a few clicks.

I've had mine nearly two years now, and have yet to have a single issue with it.

What carrier are you getting 5GB of data at only $30 a month? The lowest I'm seeing are $50 and $60 a month (and yes, they are unnecessarily "unlimited" with the minutes).

It is one of the t-mobile prepaid plans.

Scroll to the bottom of the prepaid plan lists. At the top in bright pink and large letters are the expensive plans. Then midway down in pink and slightly large letters are the moderately good deal plans. And at the very bottom next to the fine print, in a regular size and plain black font, are the $30 plans that fit the way most people actually use their phones.

Is that a family plan? (and is someone else also on that plan?) I see $50 for the first line, $30 for the second.

If I click "Mobile Internet", I see $30 a month, but it doesn't look like it includes texting or phone calls - just pure data.

It sounds like a good plan - I just can't find it! It's a single person who needs a phone, so the family plan wouldn't quite work here.

All the major carriers have these types of plans, and they hide them pretty well because they are the least profitable.

You can find the brief summary on this page. Search for the text "Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk" and you can see a tiny blurb about it on the bottom of the page. They don't list it in color like the high-end 'unlimited' plans.

To actually purchase the plan you need to go through the web site, look to get a new prepaid sim card, and it will be near the bottom of the plans, not highlighted, and similarly hard to find.

Oh wow, that is hard to find. Thanks alot, frob!

I was suggesting that he order the phone via Amazon, but I'm not sure I understand the text "This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com"

It seems like that pre-paid plan is only offered through Walmart available to any new t-mobile customer. So I buy the unlocked GSM cellphone* from Amazon.com, buy the Sim card from Walmart (wrong size SIM card. I'll just get the SIM card from T-mobile directly for free), and then put the Sim in the phone and use the phone's interface to "activate" the service. Am I understanding that correctly?

Do I then stock up on prepaid cards and activate them all every month, or do they get auto-billed once a month? (I'm guessing the former, since it's a pre-paid plan).

*@LennyLen looks like a great phone.

No, you don't buy a bunch of sim cards. The prepaid phones just mean you don't have a contract. You pay whatever you want to the account and it gets deducted every month.

In this case you would order a single SIM card for your existing (unlocked) phone. When you active the sim card online you choose the type of account you want. It takes some hunting on the page, but the cheap plans are there.

One of the nice features about the plan is that it costs EXACTLY $30 for 30 days. You don't have to worry about all the little fees they like to charge. Every three or four months I add $100 to the phone.

My family also has two other phones on the "pay as you go" plans, where they have a small amount of money on each account and it it deducts the funds when it is used. One of them spends about $10-20 per month, the other has about $5 per month.

So our family has 3 phones, one is smart phone the other are old dumb phones that are actually used as phones, and our collective phone bill for the 3 works out to be about $50/month.

Again, T-Mobile isn't the only one with this kind of plan. All the carriers have them. As you discovered they require some hunting. They are not prominently displayed because they are not very profitable for the carriers.

*@LennyLen looks like a great phone.

It is.

Sorry I can't help you with plans, but I doubt you're looking for an Australian carrier. ;)