|
From what I understand the CDMA carriers Sprint and Verison (and the 'virtual carriers' that rent use of their service) still use 2G for their primary call and SMS services and only use their 3G-5G service for data transfer.
I currently use a Moto G7 power smartphone (has 5500mAh battery that matches the all week life of my last flip phone, also not an overpriced flagship), and have found the limits of Sprint's coverage...The display will tell me LTE (aka 4G), 3G, or a plain signal strength gauge (indicating 2G service)...I can surf the web and send pictures with my texts in LTE or 3G, but if I have the bar graph I've learned that all I have is phone and text without pictures....Basically all of northeast Iowa (in my short jaunt there) is either 2G or dead zone. Northwest Wisconsin is also mostly dead zone with patches of roaming...It seems like highway 53 is the only strip of data going north and drops dead or to roaming north of there.
I had my flip phone for a long time. By the end of college, I was probably the only student with one and not by choice...My folks are cheap and my phone was part of a family plan (and I didn't have funds to buy my own phone/plan).
About the only vintage cell phones that I find interesting are the analog ones going back to the early somewhat experimental networks...
The 2 keys to survival for a smartphone: keep it in a protective cover/case so you can drop and or throw it safely, and don't get it wet (unless you get one designed to be waterproof)...Warranties are a good idea I drowned my first smartphone 3/4 way into the warranty in a beach accident and didn't get a case for my first G7 and ended up having it slip out of my hand on the downswing (read that accidentally threw it onto concrete) of the moto gesture that activates the flashlight (both phones survived well enough to recover data and use albeit not as good as before)...The current one had a case before it ever got used...Warranty pretty much covered everything both times.
|