Star Trek Communicator Move Over

 

                      And they said let there be options and more and more features to choose from

 

  Today’s flip-open cell phone was without doubt originally inspired by the creators seeing Captain Kirk pull his communicator from his back pocket and flip it open so he could say “Kirk to Enterprise, come in Enterprise”, in Star Trek (the most popular science fiction series in the history of television).  And just as Captain Kirk’s communicator could do more then just allow him to communicate, the cell phone/Smartphone that is so popular today comes with a bevy of possible additional features to excite and entertain users, depending of course on the model you buy and unfortunately how many shekels you have to spend.  Carriers have responded to the feature-rich windfall by launching a series of new fee-based services to rake in the golden trinkets for their corporate taskmasters.  Below we have listed some of the services you’re likely to run into if you’re buying your first cell phone or when you decide to trade your old cell phone in for one of the new space-age Smartphone’s.   Pricing will vary for the services because many services come as part of a bundle depending on the provider.  Almost all will require you subscribe to an extra-cost “data plan,” which includes Web access, in addition to your basic phone service.

 

  GPS-based location services, currently available only on certain high-end models, use a homing device located in the cell phone to track the phone’s whereabouts, allowing a lost person to be found or allowing a parent to locate their child.  The location is shown on the “parental” phone or a Web site in the form of a map.  The price of this service varies between $5 and $20 a month added to the cost of a plan and are available mostly from CDMA carriers, such a Spring (Family Locator); Disney Mobile, which uses Sprint’s network; and Verizon (Chaperone).

 

  A growing number of cell phone models today, mostly on CDMA networks, now have navigation systems providing real-time, turn-by-directions to any address based on their current GPS coordinates, like the ones we use while driving to keep from getting lost.  The location information is provided by third-party companies, such as MapQuest, to most of the major carriers providing this directions service.  There are a few carriers but two of the best are Verizon’s navigation service VZ Navigator and Cingular’s called TeleNav.  Cost of course will vary on the carrier and original plan but generally they charge between $5 and $10.

 

  Text messaging (also called SMS or short message service) has become by far the most popular cell phone feature outside of talking live to someone.   SMS allows you to tap-out a message on the phone’s keypad and send it to another cell phone.  Many older cell phones and almost all of the newer models have this feature included along with the accompanying fee.  Normally this is about ten cents a message, $5 a month for a basic plan, or up to $20 a month for unlimited text messages, depending on the plan and the provider.  In our survey of the plans available Sprint and T-Mobile both offer unlimited text messaging for $15 per month, not bad if you’re an incurable tapper.

 

  Today’s cell phones allow you to beautify text messages with photo’s, sounds, and 30-second video clips of your more adventurous moments.  Costs are actually pretty standard with all plans averaging about 25 cents per message.  The best deal we found was with T-Mobile, which doesn’t charge extra for multimedia messages if you already have a message package.

 

  Many of the older cell phones and almost all of the newer models produced today have web browsers, which are needed for e-mail or to access many services involving data transfers.  Cell phones are so popular many Web sites, including the search engines Google and Yahoo, automatically simplify their sites appearance for cell-phone based browsers.  In addition to text messaging, most wireless carriers provide access to instant messaging from AOL, MSN and Yahoo.  Costs vary from $6 to $20, depending on the carrier, for web access, 10 cents to send an e-mail message, and 5 to 10 cents to send an instant message.  We shopped around for the best deal for our greedy selves and ended up at T-Mobile, which offered us unlimited Web access for $6 a month.  Well that’s it for this hub, I have some surfing to do, so  join us next hub as we talk about a few things you should know before you go to our hub “The Best Web Browsing Cell Phones in the World” to find your new communicator.

 

 

~ by warrenhayashi on October 16, 2007.