Re: T-Mobile Sprint Merger: Say goodbye to scam calls

On 8/3/2020 9:40 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

<snip>

> Well, I pointed out that I agreed with the *generic* statement that a 
> smartphone without a dataplan is useless, with a big smile. You can 
> demonstrate exceptions, and so can I; I have an active smartphone 
> without a dataplan. But instead of having a conversation as everybody 
> else here and having a good time, he resorts to insulting me because I 
> do not agree with him.

Agreed. I can think of times when an unactivated smart phone can be useful.

I have an old Virgin Mobile phone that I used as a Roku remote, before 
all of our TVs were Smart TVs. A lot easier to search for things, and 
enter user IDs and passwords, using a phone than the Roku remote.

Stick a MicroSD card with 128GB worth of music into an old phone and it 
can be a source for music at home or in the car. In our backyard I built 
a car stereo into the bar I built, so I'd have a sound system with 
Bluetooth. We connect our phone to or (gasp) use CDs.

One place I worked, to do setup of our industrial device you used an 
Android phone or tablet, and there was no way to use an iPhone because 
of the iPhone's lack of GPS NMEA data as well as missing Bluetooth 
profiles. After hearing customers complain that they couldn't use their 
iPhone and that they didn't have an Android device, we just sent them a 
$20 Tracfone Android phone with the necessary applications installed.

So yeah, there are times for a device with no wireless plan, or no plan 
with data. But as I pointed out, it doesn't really cost you anything per 
month to have a basic plan.