Saké, phone

[niall_]

Still hosting my saké tasting this Saturday, around 7:30pm, as a break from gaming at dagibbs' place all day. Surprisingly, there hasn't been any addition to the tasting line-up, for once! And I really hope all who I wanted to know got the message.

Because I'm still without a cell phone.

Comments

[beable]

If you do end up with a Nexus 5, you don't need to pay to unlock it since it is naturally unlocked.

I quite like mine, but we may be looking for different things in phones, so I can't tell you whether you would or not.

I am with Rogers and I signed up for a 3 year plan with them for a discounted phone ($30 instead if $550) exactly because I knew that:
a) the price of my plan was excellent for my needs (discounted corp. rate) b) I knew that the Nexus 5 was a model that fit my needs and c) I knew that since the Nexus 5 was unlocked that it would be suitable for use when I was travelling in the US or Europe because I planned on swapping the SIM when I travelled rather than paying for out of country roaming.

If you pay "full price" for a phone so that you don't need to be locked in to a contract, then apart from the stuff you already know (e.g. checking that the phone you want is compatible with the carrier you are switching to) , then you can also save money buy NOT buying the phone at those booths in the Rideau Centre or other mall type booths.

For example, the telephone booth (or whatever it's called - the one that's provider agnostic and cells phones and plans for all of them) on the 2nd floor was selling the Nexus 5 for $500 if I bought it with a Bell or Rogers plan or for $550 if I bought it with a Fido or Koodo plan. (In all cases the phone was something like 50-150$ with the full price being listed as 500 or 550). The actual cost if bought directly from the manufacturer (Google) for the exact same model was only 350$ CDN on Google's website. I have no doubt that this is true with the other phones as well, plus the added availability of phones through other retailers.

They're not supposed to be able to mark the phones up anymore, but somehow the "full price" with these providers was 150-200 more than buying the phone directly? Yea, sure.

[beable]

My goodness I make interesting typos when writing sentences that include homophones.

"Buy not buying the phone" and "and cells phones and plans for all of them" indeed.

[niall_]

How long ago was that? Today, Google/Nexus and Sony are the only companies where you can buy directly from the supplier, and even that is usually at the same "full" price as the carriers give. Every other one (Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc) will ask which Canadian carrier you want to use as the first step in buying. Trying to buy an unlocked one of those means dealing with unknown parties online, so it's very unreliable. The mall booths, I think, pretty much do the same thing.

It's really sad, is what it is.

[beable]

I only looked at Google at the time, which was last April/May.

They still list the Nexus 5 (with 16Gb storage) as $350 (https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_5_black_16gb) but sadly they also list it as being out of stock, so yeah, probably only through the annoying mall booths.

I did briefly also look at buying a Sony Xperia off Amazon (I forget the exact model) when I briefly thought I might want a dual-SIM phone, but the reviews of the easily purchasable options for that (e.g. an unlocked Xperia) were too mixed to be inspiring and I decided it wasn't a feature I cared about that much. It seems to mostly be common to markets in South America and Asia.