If you use 2GB or less of data a month, then all four carriers will cost you about the same, with AT&T being slight cheaper at $25 a month and the rest at $30 a month.

I have a 3G phone and my average data use is between 1.5-2GB a month. So far I've never exceeded 2GB. But I'm also pretty sure that if I had a 4G phone, I'd probably end up using more data and would use more data. So when shopping for a plan, I want to be sure I'd be able to have at least 5GB of data just in case with a 4G phone.

With 5GB of data, T-Mobile and Sprint both are still just $30 a month because of their unlimited plans (though T-Mobile throttles some customers after 5GB). AT&T's data tiering will cost me $55 for 5GB and Verizon will cost $50 to $60 depending on my plan.

AT&T basically just has two tiers you can sign up for, a $15 200MB plan and a $25 2GB plan. And they charge you $10 for each GB you exceed.
Verizon has more tiers. $10 for 75MB, $30 for 2GB, $50 for 5GB, and $80 for 10GB. However if you sign up for a 2GB plan and use 5GB, you get charged $10 per GB over the 2GB plan (like AT&T does) and pay $60.

So that makes T-Mobile and Sprint look more attractive to me.

Sprint using mostly WiMax is a little bit of a concern, because LTE is obviously the future. Sprint will probably get into LTE, sounds like they are trying to work out some deal with Lightsquared to provide LTE to Sprint. But right now it's all WiMax I believe. And Clearwire is having money problems, it's stalled deployment, and performance issues are starting to be a result of that. Wonder how much longer Sprint will hold off data tiers or caps?

So with T-Mobile you have the AT&T acquisition baggage and with Sprint you have the WiMax/Clearwire baggage.

I believe the 75mb plan is for featured phones only, not smartphones.

 

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And T Mobile does not have unlimited data, they have data throttling after 2 gb.

It's 5GB. And even at that point, it's not certain it's even turned on for most people. T-Mobile boards have a lot of people that exceed that without ever being throttled.

Even if you could, you wouldn't want it anyway. You'd probably exceed the cap with one YouTube HD video.

Yeah, might be a good idea to go out today and get a Droid Charge or Thunderbolt today.

Well the droid bionic which is the one to really get from what I have seen so far in hardware leaks is not coming out till Aug or something... So options are limited on 4g front for those looking to get onto the unlimited boat before it sales. There are outstanding 3g options ofcourse... now if only we could get newer android OS's...

And yeah I was not really saying try to get the 75mb plan or anything just pointing it out that its not even an option incase someone got wrong idea from your listing of the data plans I would love to see the overages on a 4g smartphone with a 75mb plan lol.

 

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Thanks for the advice, I bought a phone today because of it. I ended up getting the htc incredible 2. I wanted 4g, but I didn't want to spend double the money and the charge didn't seem to have good reviews. I didn't have time to research the thunderbolt. They've got a 14 day return policy with a $35 restocking fee. So if the Droid 3 comes out before then, I might upgrade.

Edit: Now if I only could figure out how to get reminder beeps/vibrates for missed calls, texts, etc. Like if I haven't read a text, it vibrates or beeps every 2 minutes.

Edit #2: I had to d/l an app called missed reminder, I thought that feature would be more standard.

 

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Haha... yeah, dumb phones have that feature built in, but smartphones don't. Go figure.

I have the HTC Incredible 1, and love it. I think you will do fine with the Inc. 2

 

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