Virgin Mobile Kyocera M1000 Wild Card Cell Phone - Is "pay-per-minute" Worth It?
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After doing a little research on various pricing options at Virgin Mobile, I found that the pricing isn't all that bad if you find a package that works well for you. I found that Virgin Mobile offers two pay-per-minute call plans:
20/10 Talk - 20 cents/minute to anyone, and 10 cents/minute to other Virgin Mobile cellphones. Assuming that you don't use the 10 cent mobile-to-mobile minutes, this plan works out to cost about $100 for 500 minutes/month. That's not very cost-effective at all.
$6.99 Talk - This plan charges you $6.99/month plus 10 cents/minute for calls. For 500 minutes of calls/month, this works out to be $56.99/ month. This is better than the 20/10 plan, but you can still find better deals from other service providers.
Virgin also offers monthly plans, of which I was unaware; these are more like the traditional service plans offered by most other carriers. The up side to Virgin Mobile is that they don't require you to sign any long-term agreements. The monthly call rates varied depending upon the amount of minutes, but sticking with my 500 minute constant, you can get a plan for $59.99/month with 600 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends - the best deal so far in my opinion.
Text messaging, IM, email, and web browsing will cost an additional amount of money on top of the call plan. For text messages, picture messages, emails, or IM, there are a variety of plans available including pay-per-message plans. These rates are 10 cents/message for text, email, or IM and 25 cents/message for pictures. If you send over 200 messages/month, you can opt for the unlimited messaging plan for $19.99/month. You can also get 1000 messages/month for $9.99.
Web browsing adds another fee to your call plan and messaging plan. Virgin Mobile has two web browsing plans available:
Daily Pass: 24 hours of web access with up to 500 KB of use (about 50 web pages) for $1.
Monthly Pass: 5 MB of use per month (about 500 web pages) for $4.99/month.
So overall, it really depends on your mobile needs as to whether or not the Virgin Mobile Wild Card would be a good value for you. On one hand, the Wild Card is inexpensive and has some good features, while on the other hand, you can end up paying a pretty penny for all of these features, if you're not careful. I prefer to have a monthly plan so that I don't have to worry about the cost of every minute of use with my cell phone.
The overall value of purchasing the Kyocera Wild Card is good. You can get the Wild Card along with 600 anytime, free night and weekend minutes, 1000 text, picture, IM, or emails per month, and 500 web page views per month for a respectable $75/month plus $99 for the Wild Card itself. That's not bad for everything you get, and don't forget that these plans don't require an annual contract.
I probably sound like I'm promoting Virgin Mobile now, but I'm not. These plans are not cost-effective in every situation. I strongly recommend that you crunch the numbers to see if they will work out well for you before you start looking at the Kyocera Wild Card. If you find a plan that fits your budget, I would say that the Kyocera M1000 Wild Card is a good choice for anyone looking for their first smart phone and who don't want to sign up for any long-term contracts.
Sources: CNet, Blog.Amorousnerdium, Virgin Mobile
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