Hell Phones

"...Cellular phones soundin' a death tone/Corporations cold turn ya to stone before ya realize"
"Bullet in the Head" by Rage Against the Machine

I like having a cell phone. I find it very useful and convenient, but trying to get a new one without signing your life away is a huge hassle. I have T-Mobile cell service. Although Catherine Zeta Jones has never once stopped by to help me out, I have no problem with the area coverage or monthly costs. Recently however, I wanted to get new phones for me and my wife, ours were falling apart. T-Mobile wanted me to sign away my life and only offered me a junky phone that looked like it would last all of one phone call before crapping out.

Many people in this situation opt to switch carriers and get free phone when signing up. I really did not want to go down that road. I hate talking to cell phone people, which may or may not be ironic, I have to check. I decided to cut the cell companies out and blaze my own trail.

Ebay lists about 40 spagillion cell phones for cell at any given minute of the day. That is a lot. Most of these phones are "unlocked" which means that you can technically use them with any network. Our current phones have a little card installed in them called a SIM card. The card not only stores your phone book numbers, but it allows your network to recognize the phone. If you buy an unlocked phone you usually can just take your card and put it in the new phone and you are good to go. Your cell company will not know the difference and you will not have to re-up your plan for another 100 years. Unlocked phones on ebay are not super cheap, but you can get models that your particular cell company does not carry. Some networks use a different type of technology and do not have SIM cards.

Locked phones are a different story. Cell companies can "lock" a phone to an individual's SIM card, rendering the phone useless to anyone else. My sister-in-law gave me a Cingular phone she had and it would not work with my SIM card. After about thirty minutes with Google, I was able to find the unlock code and directions for getting the phone to work. So now I have a newer phone with a Cingular logo on it that says "Welcome to T-Mobile" on the screen. This is called tech-white trash.

So the next time you want a new phone and do not feel like singing a new contract, check out ebay or craigslist. You can find many phone models and most will work straight out of the box. If you get a locked phone, a little research online usually will fix the problem.