Android Phone at Best Buy: $30 activation not needed

Tommy:

I currently use T-Mobile's prepaid service. I am a very infrequent cell phone user (my "feature" phone sits in my car, charged up every other month or so, for emergency use or for meeting people or picking up at the airport, etc.).

For someone like me, I'm interested paying for minutes that can last up to a year before they expire — with rolling over even better. My T-Mobile allows me to roll over unused prepaid minutes by simply adding $10 once a year,

However, I think it would be cool to have a phone that can do a lot more, so your smart phone intrigues me.

Don't buy it as a smartphone. As a smartphone it's probably garbage. As a standalone GPS, it's probably a pretty decent, cheap solution.

You have a point there… although reading further, there seems to be multiple complaints about short battery life — mostly vaguely worded, of course.

The phone portion is a monthly service that expires each month (unlimited everything for 55 bucks) the best I can tell…I didnt buy it for the phone features though so Im not sure how pay as you go works. It is also CDMA so no go on unlocking it and using a different SIM in it.

Ive been playing around with the 2 units that I bought all day and they are still above 65 percent battery. I could get a lot more use out of it if I left the screen locked all day and just recorded tracks or played mp3's Im sure. The largest battery drain today has been the screen according to the status thingy in about this phone. The next being wifi…neither of which I would be using when recording GPS tracks. They can be rooted and the extra bloatware removed also to give it even longer battery life but Ive only gone as far as rooting them; I havent removed any bloat yet.

The most useful feature, and the reason I bought them, is the GPS..it locks extremely fast compared to any smartphone Ive used in the past without using any "assisted" features or sensors. Load your favorite GPS app on it and you have one heck of a cheap GPS system. There are even GPS apps that dont require cell service for the maps, you just preload them over wifi…so far Im still liking these guys.

If they dont work out on the trail, I can always use them around the house as touchscreen remotes or squeezeplayers for my squeezebox server. They are running android gingerbread 2.3.4 so for the most part (minus the few ICS updates that have come out) are very up to date OS wise.

Thanks, Tommy. Very helpful!

dang, it was 30 yesterday, today its 69.99